What would be helpful for folks to help you is if you have a to scale image of your kitchen - you can use graph paper (ie 1 square = 1 foot) on it, indicate what parts/walls/windows/doors/plumbing/etc can’t be moved and those that can.

Also include an overall floor plan for how the kitchen relates to the rest of the house.

Ither questions that are relevant: many cooks in the kitchen? How big is your family? What’s your budget?

Cheers!

Ikea has a kitchen planner to create floorplans that may help you.

Do you have an iPad? I bought a program called RoomPlanner for about $10. It is great for basic layouts and to show the rest of the house as it relates to the kitchen. You will get great advice here, better than a planner at a big box store, and even better than many pro kitchen designers. It will be worth your while to give as much info as you can, you will be amply rewarded.

Here is an example of a plan I did on RoomPlanner.

Graph paper and a pen/ruler work just fine.

Okay folks, here's my first ever attempt at a to-scale drawing of our existing kitchen/eat in area. We measured every single thing but I wasn't sure what to annotate on here. If you need more info let me know; I have it! Two things I want to point out: the wall behind the dish washer only goes as far as the dishwasher (floor to ceiling) and is load-bearing as it used to be the exterior wall of the house. There is a beam that goes the rest of the way. The previous owners added a formal living room off the kitchen [we think] about 1994ish. My first thought was to remove that wall to open the whole kitchen to the living room (instead of just part of it) but my husband just pointed out that ALL the pipes and electrical are in that wall. The other thing is that the doorway on the far left leads to our our dining room, which when this house was first built in the 50s, is where the original kitchen was. It was a long galley kitchen. The previous owners moved the kitchen to be "the heart of the house" aka in the middle. So....as our kitchen sits now there are no windows in it but there is a skylight and plenty of light as the living room has lots of windows and a sliding door. The windows go almost to the floor so in order to add where the breakfast nook is, we'd have to "shorten" the windows, which I guess could be done.

I've added some photos of when we bought the house, too, so you can kind of see how the living room sits off the kitchen. Please no comments about how the house is decorated or painted; this are photos from when we bought it 18 months ago, not how it is now. What I would like, however, are suggestions for how to make this kitchen more functional. We lack adequate prep space (except for the peninsula which honestly is always covered in stuff as it's the first flat landing space when you come into the house.) I also dislike the electric cooktop, which we are in the beginning stages of trying to replace. The space next to the double oven houses all of our small appliances with one of those old-school doors that slide up like a bread box. We use our blender everyday and our coffee grinder and toaster about everyday too so it's actually nice to have that space, it just eats into our counter space.

We are a family of three (the youngest is 7) and we don't entertain a lot, but when we do, everyone just sort of piles around the peninsula. I feel as though this kitchen is not very open or conducive to holding a lot of people. We do cook everyday and as I mentioned above I work from home so I also eat lunch here.

You have a very pretty kitchen, but the wall ovens are in a strange location. You could get rid of the ovens and the appliance garage, and center a range on the 'U', or make the French doors a single, then put a shallow pantry on the side of the fridge, and move the ovens to that wall. In that scenario the peninsula would be landing for the fridge, and you'd have two prep spaces. One, between the sink and range/cooktop, and two, on the peninsula.

Thanks so much for the updated info! Much easier to visualize now =)

I agree with mama goose - the 'easiest' fix would be to change out the cooktop + double ovens for a range, and center that in the bottom of the 'U'. You gain counter space on both sides of the range (including prep space that doesn't have to overlap the DW)

- I suppose since you mentioned the kitchen is in the middle of the home, that there isn't an easy way to vent a hood above the stove? There are other options that will at least help (it doesn't look like you have any sort of fan above it now)

- I would also think about making the french doors a single door... could you draw up how the rest of the house around the kitchen looks? Doesn't have to be to scale - just am trying to visualize what's on the other side of those french doors and how your family and guests enters/leaves and move about the house

Thanks!

Thanks all! Yes! I’m working on sketching the rest of the house now - well the front part anyhow. Our house is a very odd layout essentially two rings. The living/kitchen ring and the bedroom ring. Hard to explain without a picture. Yes I agree the ovens are in a weird place but I will admit I love having two ovens and we use them both at the same time probably 3-4x a week. Right now there is no vent above the cooktop. Our sweet 30inch GE electric cooktop (sarcasm there) has a built in downdraft to the unit itself. There isn’t much room behind the cooktop for a pop up vent. I’ve exhausted (no pun intended) tons and tons of options for replacing it and putting in a vent and they all come up short. For now I’ll work on the drawing of the house. Thanks so much!!

@damiarain Here's the best I could do with Illustrator. None of it is to scale but it's important you see the flow. Black solid rectangles are for entryways where as the outlines are windows. As you can see, we have a lot of doorways and only a few windows mostly on the back of the house. That double-ish overlapped rectangle in the living room is a sliding door to the back patio. The two fireplaces are definitely overkill especially for Southern California. We have thought about moving the kitchen to the Formal Living Room so many time since buying the house but we also know that would be a major major project. It would essentially be a GIANT U-Shaped kitchen back there and the venting is already there for a hood with that fireplace. But I digress. Let's work with what we have!

Do you need to keep a table in the kitchen, and the built in storage unit? I’m wondering about shifting the main pantry section to over there (so stuff you want to grab quickly, like cooking oil, would stay in the kitchen by the stove, but things you plan to get out - like flour or pasta - would be in the pantry) and maybe a wall oven, too - so you’d have range with oven below the cooktop, and then a second oven a bit further away. Depends how you cook, though - the second oven would be fine for putting baking type stuff in (prep on the peninsula, transfer to oven) but not a good trek for doing stovetop to oven. But if you could stick some of you ‘wall of tall’ over there, it would open up counter space in the main work area.

How often do you cook with someone else helping?

For a range with oven you can consider the Bosch Benchmark or 800 slide-in induction. Here It's 28-7/8" deep and 31-1/2" wide. Adding several inches to the depth of the counter on that wall would increase the usability of the work zones around the range. An alternative is to use an induction cooktop like a Miele or Bosch unit with a here Best Cattura downdraft behind it. A cooktop is 21-1/4" deep and the downdraft is 2-1/2" deep right behind the cooktop. Installation options A 36" induction cooktop gets flexzone options.

Plan for a new drop zone so your peninsula no longer gets cluttered with stuff!

I think I would eliminate everything beyond dishwasher on that open end .Instead use all that floorspace for a larger island. Maybe double island. Lots of storage for you, better seating, be creative with finishes and details as it is a great spot which intersects everything. Move fridge into pantry location, figure out cooking setup with your contemplated changes...sink can go on wall of kitchen, or island. Just sketch it up a few ways and island shapes, sizes without peninsula and sink there....use markings on floor, pretend small table is gone.

Are you willing to lose the French doors completely?

Thanks for the floor plan details

As mentioned above, I would also look hard at what you can do to mitigate the peninsula being the first drop point in the house - this would go a long way to de-clutter the kitchen. The entry on your plan (at the 'top') that's your family's main entrance? Maybe we could look around there to add some storage solutions there

You mentioned using both the ovens 3-4x / week. Do you need the full height of both? Could a two-oven range work for you? (just a random example below: the GE PS978STSS)

I'm not sure that I'm seeing the space available to have 1 (let alone 2) islands since your kitchen space is only ~7.5' square (10.5 on the one side if you remove the peninsula).

I too am curious about the built-in storage on the other side of the french doors and the breakfast nook - do you use it regularly? Some other thoughts - your Family Room is quite wide, could the entry space be expanded into it (yay more storage options!) and therefore the kitchen entry could also be shifted thus turning the area that's currently french doors into more kitchen

Lots of comments here, thank you so much! I'll do my best to address all of them. The built-in storage in the breakfast area is something that we put in when we moved in. It's sort of an...extension of the kitchen if you will. We built it from Ikea cabinets so it has tons of drawers for storage of bigger bulky items (bowls, trays etc) that we use for entertaining but not for everyday use. It also holds ALL of our stemware, liquor and wine, vases, linens etc. It's quintessential to keeping that stuff out of the kitchen where we use every square inch for kitchen things. Knowing this kitchen was smaller (than our last one) we knew it was imperative to build more storage and we built it with Ikea with the intentions of eventually matching it to the rest of the kitchen. We knew when we bought this house that a kitchen overhaul was in order (not that it's not updated; just that for us it's a bit small and as we are finding out, not as functional as we would like.) This built-in area in the breakfast area also holds our microwave so it doesn't take up the precious/limited counter space we have in the kitchen. We use the breakfast area table everyday. It's our main table for eating. We hardly ever use that darned "formal dining room" and in a perfect world, I would knock out the wall between them and have one big open room. In the original layout of this house in the 1950s that dining room was the kitchen so our existing kitchen got moved to the other side of the house completely somewhere around 1994. There didn't used to be a wall between the dining room and the rest of the area. That was put up in 1994 so we know it can come down if need be. But knocking down that wall, we would lose a wall in which to put cabinets and move the pantry over there.

We have recently decided to ditch the French doors completely but that doesn't free up any space really. As they are now, they don't even open all the way (the one door opens parallel to the pantry by the fridge and the other opens wider but taps the side of the built-in unit we put in the breakfast nook. All they do is make the kitchen look cluttered. Sure they look nice in theory, but they don't serve a proper function. There used to be mini French doors in between the breakfast area and dining room but we took those off right away as they serve no function and limit light coming in from the French doors in the dining room (the previous owners were apparently obsessed with French doors.) BUT by ditching the ones into the kitchen, we don't gain any useable space for more kitchen storage or more importantly, more counter space. That entry door at the "top" of the diagram is the front door. It does open to a small entryway (maybe 6x12) but there's a hallway on one side and the entry into the family room on the other side so to preserve walkways, and the main entry into the kitchen, you can't really expand that way if that makes sense. Part of what makes reconfiguring this space so difficult is there's 3 different walkways around the kitchen. There's one behind it which leads to the back half of the house, one at the top which is the MAIN entry by French doors, and then one behind the fridge area that also leads to the guest bath and then our Master. It really is in the center of the house so expanding in any direction cuts off a walkway.

As for the ovens. We regularly use both at the same time but we definitely don't need two full sized ones. We recently started thinking about removing them and putting a 3/4 sized oven (or half size) under the cabinet which would free up counter space, and then getting a range which would give us the full-sized oven. We need to visit an appliance store and measure induction cooktops because without making that back counter wider, I just don't see how we would have space for a cooktop AND a downdraft pop-up vent. Right now there's about an inch on each side and not much wiggle room to move it forward or back to create a 2.5 inch space for a vent (but our unit is bowed out in the front so maybe that creates the illusion of less space.)

As I'm typing this my husband pulled out our dyer which I didn't include in my super awesome layout diagram of the house but it is directly behind the existing cooktop and hooray! there's a gas hookup just sitting there unused. So I'm going to take that as the win for today. Hooking up gas will not be a huge problem!

@bellburgmaggie We are on a slab. No basement. No crawl space and very limited access to the attic although our attic is as big as the house. We just had our A/C ducts redone and insulation blown in (what a fun project that was, btw) so any time we need to access the attic it costs a ton of money. We can move pipes if we absolutely have to. There's two schools of thoughts. One is work with the existing kitchen and try to make it better and the other is to totally demo the kitchen and either MOVE it (to the formal living room) or knock down walls and make it bigger etc. One is obviously more costly than the other and more involved so for now, I am desperately trying to just make this existing kitchen more functional.

@herbflavor That was my original idea; to demo the peninsula and create an island buuuut....the more I think about it, we don't really gain much by doing so. I mean, it would essentially be the same amount of storage space that we have no (which storage isn't the issue actually) but I do wonder if it would help with the flow because you can walk around all sides of an island whereas with this peninsula we have you're sort of trapped in the kitchen once you get in there. But I am going to do some sketches of that plan anyways. Moving the sink to the island. Keep in the load-bearing wall where the dishwasher is etc.

Thank you so much everyone! I'm excited that people are chiming in with answers and suggestions. This is so helpful!

By moving the pantry to the breakfast area, but leaving the fridge IN the actual kitchen we gain a lot of space. Knocking out the peninsula and creating an island creates more useable workspace but I am wondering...does an island ruin the flow of the room too much. I worry mostly about blocking walkways. Because our kitchen is literally in the middle of our house, it's surround by three walkways. The most important of which is at the "top" as this is the main artery in and out of the house. Ditching the French doors at the "top" of the room and leaving that as just a wide walkway does it matter if the island hangs over into that space? Also, we'd have to change out the window by the new pantry unit as it's currently almost floor to ceiling and only about 4 inches away from the edge of the wall so in order to make the pantry flush with the wall, the window needs to be smaller and narrower.

The island drawn above looks awkward to me - I think it would be even less functional than the current peninsula. If you want an island in this space, I think you will have to look at an L shaped layout (eliminate the bottom of the current U, where the DW is) and then put a long, narrow island in the center of the space. This would effectively give you a galley kitchen with seating on the living room side of the island. Can you enlarge the passageway from kitchen to living room at all?

Another option, given that you mentioned that you never use the dining room, might be to move the kitchen into the dining room and extend it into what is currently the breakfast area (provided you can remove the wall between them). If you did that you could close the passage between family and current dining to give yourself a nice long cabinet run. This would have the added bonus of direct patio access from the kitchen.

Please don't shoehorn an island into your kitchen, futura431. It won't improve your lay-out. In fact, I think it's going to make it much worse. Sorry, but your kitchen isn't wide enough to add an island, not without removing walls.

Please tell us why you want an island so that we can figure out a way to satisfy that desire in a way that makes sense, budget-wise and lay-out-wise for your kitchen.

"...our dining room, which when this house was first built in the 50s, is where the original kitchen was...."

Are the pipes for water and gas still accessible in the DR? If not, I would expect that moving the kitchen back to its original location would be cost-prohibitive, especially in the S. Cal area.

But if they are still in place, moving the kitchen is possible. But that still won't give you room for an island, at least not one wider than about 18" so that you still have adequate aisles at the top and bottom of it. It would either provide a little additional counter and shallow storage (15" deep cabinets) or counter seating, no storage, with all but one seat on the long side. There might be a way to get both but that depends on how many seats at the counter you want.

Examples:

Pretty sure the island below is wider than 18" but it gives you an idea how to do seating at a narrow island.

Are you able to remove the wall between DR and nook/kitchen area? If so, are you willing to give up the nook seating and have only one area for table dining?

I think you'd also need to consider how would moving the kitchen away from the family/play room change the dynamic when you entertain.

@biondanonima (Zone 7a Hudson Valley) That's originally where the kitchen was when this house was built. It was a long galley kitchen with direct access to the patio. I would love to have a window (or some natural light to the outside) in the kitchen. There's a skylight but you can't see out of it into the backyard, is my point. Originally the dining room wasn't open to the family room. They created that opening. The wall between the dining and breakfast is NOT load bearing and is able to come down. That's an option, and definitely one we've considered to open up the space but it's a risk because that wall could be used for storage or something. The walkway to the other rooms can't be changed or moved at all. Behind the cooktop is our laundry "closet" which is in the hallway to the other ring of the house. All the bedrooms and an additional guest bath are back there so without a significant remodel involving hundreds of thousands of dollars, nothing back there can be moved or widened.

@lisa_a We don't NEED an island nor do I really want one (meaning it's not my reason for redesigning the kitchen) but we are basically just trying to figure out a way to add more counter space and more useable space to the existing layout with moving everything around or making an entire new kitchen. Unfortunately everything past the DW is load bearing, and there isn't a beam there (there's a beam the rest of the way towards breakfast area (see photos above) but it ends where the dishwasher wall starts) and I know that tearing down a load bearing wall adds significant $$$ to a remodel because the beam would need to be added all the way across (or we'd need to put in a support column in the middle of the room basically.) The dishwasher wall used to be the exterior wall of this house. The living room was added on in 94 when they moved the kitchen to the "middle" of the house. I agree that the island looks awkward but it was suggested above to try to remove the peninsula. The kitchen can feel a bit like a black hole at times especially with many people in it. There's only one way in and out so an island opens up another entry point. It was just an idea. Not sold on it though. Basically the end goal is to create more workable space and ditch the electric cooktop. Having the kitchen in the middle of the house, IMO, is a cute idea but it totally lacks in function and limits where you can expand because it's surround by things that can't be easily changed.

@lisa_a I have no idea if the pipes are stuff are still there. I know the vent was still on the roof until about a year ago when we had it removed to install solar. But I think you're right, moving it BACK to it's original location would be cost prohibitive. It's funny. When we entertain, nobody ever goes into the living room. It could be that it's more of a casual play room than anything but everyone just sort of hovers in the space between the breakfast table and the peninsula. It's an awkward space. Definitely open to knocking down that wall and have thought about it many many times. I'm not married to having a breakfast table and would love to use our dining room more often actually (we could use it for all our meals, that's fine) Our son has taken a liking to eating breakfast at the peninsula lately. I just worry about knocking down a wall that could be used for some sort of pantry area as suggested above. That would free up some precious precious counter space in the kitchen area.

Oops, just saw that there's a large opening in the top wall between DR and FR. So moving the kitchen to the DR may not work well, not without moving this entry or be willing to swap out French doors for windows on the bottom wall and using the LR slider as the only door to the backyard.

Unless you know the pipes are still in place and that they are in a good location, I think moving the kitchen to the DR is going to be too expensive for what you'd gain.

With a long, narrow island and an L shaped kitchen instead of a U, the living room passageway would act as the "aisle" for the seating side of the island - might encourage your guests to make better use of that space? I'm not at a computer so I can't post a drawing of what I mean right now, but I'll try to post one tomorrow.

@lisa_a Honestly we never use the French doors to the patio. Ever. For the first three months we lived here they were secured with a bicycle lock lol. The lock on the handle was broken and a replacement, of course, was impossible to find and since they don't get heavy use we didn't bother to fix it. It's fixed now, not to worry. We really should consider using them more but since we don't use the dining room all that often it gets forgotten. The sliding door in the FR currently IS the only way we get to the backyard. So replacing them with windows is an option but I agree, I think moving it back to its original location is a waste of money. We don't gain that much without closing off the entry to the front room. A lot of houses in this neighborhood have their kitchen there and I'm always so envious until I see how dark their family room is without that natural light coming from the dining room. There's a bay window in the family room but it doesn't get much sun as it's north facing. That's more than you needed to know, I'm sure, but basically I agree with you. Moving it there doesn't gain us very much.

Now that you've explained your reasons for not moving the kitchen back to the DR, I agree with you. However, do you think you might use that room more if you opened the wall between it and the breakfast area, perhaps making it into a larger informal dining area? It just seems a shame not to use it, and if you could move your diniing in there, you could extend kitchen storage and/or an island even further into the current breakfast area.

Knocking down the wall is definitely an option we have talked about it and are considering it as it would open it up, I am just hesitant to lose a wall in the space if we are trying to gain more counterspace knocking down the wall doesn’t achieve that goal. Does that make sense? By knocking down the wall we gain area but I’m just not sold on how useable that area becomes besides being more open. The French doors in the dining room could easily be a window. I’m not tied to them in any way.

You're right that you lose a potential counter area by removing that wall (or widening the entry, which I think might be nicer), but with the two wide entryways dividing the kitchen and breakfast area, I'm not sure the breakfast side will ever really feel like part of the kitchen even if you do put counters over there.

@biondanonima (Zone 7a Hudson Valley) very fair and valid point. Right now it definitely feels like two different areas because one is gray Ikea cabinets and one is the white you see in the above photos. That's not a BAD thing, but it is a thing. I just mentioned to my husband about maybe keeping the wall but making that entryway wider and he agreed that could be nice. Although I'd love to see in 3D what it would look like without that wall. I really really like the idea someone mentioned above about moving the "tall wall" storage area to that wall and freeing up another 3 feet of counter space in the actual kitchen. But dropping the double oven and getting a range will free up counter space as well as lighten up that area too. And it won't stick out as far as it does now so the counter all the way to the fridge wall becomes useable versus now where the appliance garage, while functional, steals any useable counter space to the left of the ovens (for prep) The appliance garage itself is quite useful I just hate that bread drawer type door that's on it.

Seems like removing the wall between the areas is our best option at the moment.

You keep saying you want more counter space, but you do have a lot of it. It’s just that it’s not laid out effectively. Maybe a solution is adding a prep sink; that’s what makes it a 2-person kitchen, not more counter space.

Starting from the french door, try this:

double oven

fridge

counter

prep sink

cooktop (on same wall it is currently)

dishwasher

cleanup sink (where it is currently)

peninsula

And I agree with eliminating the wall and making one large dining space.

How about a wall of storage (or beverage bar with sink, mini fridge) on the far wall of the dining room? Doesn’t look like a window is there.

@emilyam819 Yes exactly; the sections of existing counter space aren't totally usable as they are. They are small, broken up segments. What we are trying to do is make longer, more efferent prep spaces. We measured last night; it's 47 square feet of counter total not all of which is useable mind you;) our old house had 80. So...that's a huge difference. We've lived in five houses now and have never had a prep sink. The only issue with putting it next to the fridge and double oven is then we lose what small section of counter we have to begin with over there. It's broken up by the appliance garage. Someone mentioned moving the pantry and sliding the fridge down. That frees up about 3 feet of counter space that would be useable so maybe by doing that a prep sink could go in on that wall (where fridge is now?) That's a much longer, continuous area if appliance garage is removed that adds another foot or two into the mix.

Funny you mention the back wall of the dining room. We just installed a storage unit there three days ago (the royal "we" I actually didn't help at all!) It houses our linens and stuff we don't use everyday or only use around the holidays, as well as a few other odds and ends we don't need access to on a daily basis. I think we need to think about putting in a small beverage fridge in the storage unit in the breakfast area but that's not a priority right now. Maybe when we remodel and knock out all the walls!

Thanks for all the suggestions! :)

As I noted the downdraft Cattura takes up 2-1/2" and an induction cooktop is 21-3/4". That's 24-1/4" plus 2" for front counter lip and 1" at the rear and a 28" counter along that wall gets you ventilation that works. Induction is faster, more powerful and more responsive than gas without the waste heat. So you need less vent capacity. Worth checking the threads in the Appliance forum.

@dan1888 Thanks, I will definitely look into that thread. I've gotten my husband on board, and as he is the main cook, he desperately wants a gas cooktop. But I am hearing such good things about induction these days. I haven't talked to a single person who put it in and regrets it. My friend redid her kitchen in May and she put in induction. She then moved to Sacramento unexpectedly in in August where she bought a house with gas and told me she wishes the house had induction. At the end of the day, I have to believe that either way we go, it will be a HUGE step up from the electric cooktop we are using now.

You will spend more time prepping than loading or unloading the DW, so if you're considering a second sink, think about having the clean-up zone on the top wall. The current sink would become the prep area, where you could interact with folks at the peninsula, and you'd have a view of the living areas, plus dirty dishes would be less noticeable. But that would mean moving the pantry, and appliance garage, and giving up the wall ovens.

If we were to demo the DW wall (which is load bearing) and create a true L shaped kitchen, I do think an island would work. Something like this?

We have a door/walkway in that same exact spot (leading to the back guest bath and bedrooms) and then our French doors would be by those upper left cabinets just off the edge of the frame. Obviously, our appliances are not in the same places but I do think an island is workable by getting rid of that wall. The island could extend far past the edge of the cabinets/entry and if we move the seating to the living room side, there's more passerby room (where their bev. fridge is) This kitchen btw is drool worthy, I think. I wish those big flowers weren't there so I could see that corner in full! I would demo my kitchen tomorrow and put this one in if money were no object.

That kitchen is gorgeous (navy island *heart eye emoji*)

My best guesstimate is that it is very similar to what you already have... (key word: guesstimate)

Image 1 is the fantasy kitchen in your kitchen footprint (minus the DW-wall of course)

Image 2 is the above elements overlaid onto your current kitchen. I realize the openness of the fantasy kitchen is very eye catching.. but other differences are there isn't a pantry and there is not a tower of ovens in the middle of the kitchen (tho there is the extra tall upper cabinet next to the fridge). There is a second set of uppers that maximizes storage all the way up to the ceiling. All together it makes the fantasy kitchen look very open and airy.

I think you've gotten a lot of great feedback so far - but I also think that you and your family need to sit down and decide how much you're willing to do. Move plumbing to relocate the sink? Knock down walls? Re-locate the DW-wall's inners + add a beam? Relocate the kitchen all together? In a lot of ways, you're lucky because you have a ton of great options, but the cost and headache for each is different...

Here's a really crappy mockup of what I was talking about with the long, narrow island. I didn't bother to move all of the appliances/sink/etc. around, but there would be a ton of possibilities, depending on whether you want wall ovens or a range, etc. Widening the doorway/passageway to the dining room would help it feel more connected to the kitchen without having to move the wall or knock it down entirely.

Your drawing didn't include the measurement for the width of the current opening to the living room. That measurement would be a determining factor in the size of the island, since the opening is creating the "aisle" for the seating.

That is a great solution - maybe my favorite so far. The opening to the living room now is highly dictated by the edge of the peninsula and I’m not home to measure it but I’d say it’s probably 5’9 or so. It’s wider than the French door opening at the top but not by much. And I also agree that widening the dining room doorway but not knocking down that wall completely will open the space up and make it feel more like one room. This way our dining table becomes the main eating table but there’s still seating in the kitchen. If we swapped the built in unit for the pantry area we could leave the window where it is without having to raise it to counter height to allow for pantry storage underneath.

I wasn't quite visualizing what you meant the right way so thank you so much for mocking up that quickie. I really like it! It seems like by knocking down the load bearing DW wall really opens up the space without locking ourselves into a specific shape.

worthwhile to look at "double islands" as well...now you have many configurations....I have seen splitting the longish island...if the pantries and "built in" assembly on far left were narrower depth...split this long island into two...same alignment ...push the left one over... walk passage between. Really dynamic space unfolds.