Hi Sugarbaby, Your post was very interesting and it will be exciting to see what the gurus help you figure out. I'm not a guru, but I'll toss some ideas out that may or may not be helpful. Do you use the coat closet as a coat closet? If not, I'd be eying it up for your pantry to get the pantry cupboard out of the kitchen. Someone posted an awesome pantry that was a converted closet (about the size of yours) filled in with Ikea drawers a few weeks ago. It was amazing what they were able to fit inside there. Edited to add the thread with Mulemom's ikea pantry drawers, below. I really think you need more landing space next to your sink. I realize you were trying to avoid corner cupboards, but with the size of your kitchen I think putting a corner cupboard where you have your pantry drawn would give you some desperately needed counter space. You'll need a spot for dirty dishes (both from the table and from any cooking or baking activities) to land before they go in the dw, and 2' is awfully tight for a family of 7. You are also going to want to shorten the island a bit. Even with a cd fridge, it's a bit too tight, I think. Most CDs still stick out past the counter, unfortunately. That's a main walk area and it will function much better for your active family if it's wider. It's fantastic that you are starting your planning so early. We started planning our kitchen when we first moved into this house 4 years ago, and it has taken us until a few weeks ago to hammer it out. (Lots of challenging "architecture", big family, extra appliances, etc.) Hopefully yours won't take nearly as long. Best wishes! : ) Here is a link that might be useful: Mulemom's closet is about 1/2 way down the page This post was edited by laughable on Thu, Feb 7, 13 at 12:04

L-L, As you're starting to ask about a new plan, please make a drawing with exact dimensions on it. It's not hard to do, and it will save everybody trouble in the end. For instance: from your sketch I would infer that one square is equal to 12" because you've shown standard 24" counters covering two squares. If that's the case you've got clearance problems between the edge of your work table and the stove counter leg since you're only showing three squares or three feet - 36". That's pretty tight. On the other side of the table you have an aisle behind the chairs of about the same width. One of these aisles will inevitably be the main travel path within the kitchen and at that width you're designing in a traffic problem. In reality, maybe it's not that bad. But unless you make a drawing with accurate dimensions, you're just doodling around. Come on, now, get out your measuring tape and get those dimensions down on paper. That way you're not wasting anybody's time over a plan that isn't really a plan. Inspiration pictures, and rough sketches have their places -we've all BTDT, so I'm not dismissing that. But if you really want to know if your ideas will work, there is no subsitute for doing the decidely un-glam work of taking the actual measurements. For instance, maybe you've really got 41-42" clearance in those aisles. In that case you're good to go, sort of; that's tight for a main traffic aisle, but generally considered workable. But what of it's less than 36" per aisle- then you've got big, big, problems. Problems that you can get help solving, if necessary, here. But help us to help you by posting drawings with real measurements, (wall by wall, not just generic whole-foot room sizes). Don't mean to seem crabby with you, but I think you'll get even more (and better!) help with your design questions if you make it easier for us, and ante up with the measurements. L

Carol, What I was trying to say is that there maybe different ways of 'centeralizing' the sink if that is a desired feature to make things look right for you. I gave three different ways just as examples. First one is to look at the sink and the two DWs as a whole, then the tendency is to put the sink in the middle and one DW on eitheir side. The backsplashed section reinforced this idea somewhat. Second one is to align the sink with the island. Aligning central line of sink with that of the island may not be feasible. But the option B has the sink right edge aligned with that of the island pretty well. Third one is to take that whole wall including the corner section as a reference (which I estimated to be about 9ft wide). Then I realized that the sink in option A is already at center position. To pursue that idea, you may need to consider how to place the high cabinets to make it look right. I think there may be a good opportunity there as there is a large window there. If you can expose the front side of the corner and tie it to the rest of the wall, i.e., the corner food storage cabinet opens downward, and there is no ceiling height high cabinet between the window and the food storage, it may work out OK. I am not very clear about the vertical arrangement of the cabinets and what is why I said 3D arrangement of the cabibnets to acheive the concept and 3D rendering to examine how it look like would be helpful if you like to see more in the line of ahieving Option A DWs side by side with sink still being at a central location. Hope that explains what I meant better. Sorry for writing so long but I don't know how to describe it concisely. JF

Ok, makes me laugh that two of you mention that you had this sort of setup in the house you grew up in! Maybe I should make this a "revival" kitchen. To achieve Holligator's setup - my sink would be half under and have not under the window. I think it would look pretty bad, especially given what it would do to the wall cabinets. I'm not really keen on moving the DW to the right of the sink because that is my prep zone and I really don't want dirty dishes hanging out in that area. Without moving windws, I don't really have many other options. I think I need to really pay attention to how I process my dishes. Generally, I just scrape and plop them in the DW - they never even touch the sink. The batwing sink oruboris showed got me thinking about doing two sinks (I'm not a big fan of the batwing setup, but two sinks - two taps, maybe). I wonder how it would work to do a two sink two tap set up similar to the batwing, but with the one on the right a bigger sink than the one on the left. Or maybe I could push the sink and DW down to the end of the run - though that messes with my wall cabinets. Ok, I'm rambling now. Gotta do some thinking on it. Thanks for your thoughts!