cooki1268: It's from AYA kitchens 2009 winter catalog/magazine. Here's the link, but it's a huge pdf. I think it's page 12. We're not going with their cabinets, but I did love that picture (gotta find those stools!) www.ayakitchens.com/media/.../AyA_Inspired%20Design2_sm.pdf Thanks to all the other smart and objective advice givers! I'll show my current floor plan, which will help you all see where the doors lead to: We added the wall and opened up the basement stairs to close off the family room from the front door. We also changed the sliding glass door into a picture window and added the side garden door. We face west so we get a ton of light from the back windows and garden door. There's also a silly 40" raised breakfast bar behind the D/W. To answer some of florantha's questions: you can see my current kitchen layout does curve into a "U." I was trying to limit that for 2 reasons: not going to invest in a CD fridge and hate to see the fridge sticking out into the kitchen. As well, also dislike that dead corner between the fridge and stove. One cook household, and we do eat at home most of the time. Two kids that like to help with baking. I was trying not to move walls, windows, sink, etc., simply to put my money into cabs and counters. Need seating for 4 regularly, but have a large dining room table for bigger dinners.

We have a 13x5’ island and love it. But our kitchen is essentially a galley kitchen that is open to the living room. The other side of the island is just seating with some extra storage underneath for rarely used items. Any wider than 5’ and I don’t think my 5’4” self could clean it (and it’s a slight struggle at the very center of the 5’). We would probably feel differently if it was in the middle of our kitchen and we had to walk around it to access things.

Celery, hi again and thank you. I just realized (after ordering the fixture....) we only have a 9 foot ceiling. We would like fixture to be 6 feet from the floor over island. That means we would only use about 18 inches of chain. Please look at fixture again in post above. Do you think this will work? I hate returning things.....

I like bmorepanic's direction, but if you want an island with all one surface, have you considered flipping the seating? A small TV could go above ovens. You could have a wall of shallow storage as you enter from the garage/laundry, and encourage traffic to go around the work areas. I would include a sink on the island for extra prep, snack prep, handwashing, etc., to keep those activities out of the main prep cooking zones. Primary prep could stay between the clean-up sink and cooktop, with DW and dish storage to the left. Trash pull-out on the corner of the island would be convenient to all zones.