What's happening in the lower level of your home? Bedrooms? Basement? Foyer?

Split level home. Lower level (just 2 or 3 stairs down) is a family room, office and half bathroom/laundry room. The main level is the kitchen, dining room and living room. Empty attic space above this. 3 bedrooms upstairs, with stairs down into the living room.

The steps from the kitchen just lead to a hallway (half bath on the left, sliding door to backyard on the right).

I would recommend talking to a Kitchen Designer. They will be able to evaluate your wants and needs and see the space/surrounding spaces for themselves. They will then decide what the best layout may be for you.

From what I'm seeing and the little information I know about you and your home, your options look good. I would consider traffic flow. The red lines indicate traffic from the lower level to the living room.

1. Something to think about: The peninsula directs traffic right through the work triangle. This traffic may interfere with the person(s) who are using the kitchen and could be annoying after awhile. However, if you don't plan on going outside often, or you have another bathroom on the main level, you may not have a lot of traffic from the lower level to the main lvl.

2. The island layout is nice because it directs traffic through only one section of the work triangle. The island will keep people out of the range and fridge zones if they're simply walking by. The downside is that you would be cutting through your work triangle....You can always add a prep sink in the island to help with the cut interference.

I haven't really considered moving the range on the exterior wall. This is the one thing we were anticipating keeping in its current location. The window in the kitchen is new-ish (compared to everything else in the house), so replacing it wasn't really on our radar.

As far as traffic flow goes, there is another way to the bathroom on the lower level/slider to backyard (just less convenient from dining area). There are stairs to the lower level in the front of the house, from the living room. I can try to mock up a full floor plan of the two non-bedroom levels later.

I have considered the prep sink in the island. Also thought about putting the main sink/dishwasher there, but figured that was too much to cram in on the fridge side of the island.

I am meeting with a designer tomorrow morning. He's seen the house already, which is helpful.

Thanks for the comments so far!

I think if the range and sink are in the same 'L', then it's not so important that the fridge is on the other side of the LL entry. Traffic will pass between DW and dish storage, but there is sufficient space between the open door and drawers. With the sink in the peninsula you can prep while interacting with those seated there. A helper can unload the DW, or gather dishes to set the table, without interfering in prep and cooking tasks.

Thanks again for the thoughts. Still not sure we want to reduce the window size to put the stove on that wall, but it's good to think through all of our options.

Here's the full floor plan for the two levels with the living space. You'll see that traffic doesn't need to go through the kitchen... everyone just needs to take a detour in the other direction :-)

Hopefully it enlarges enough to read - otherwise I can split into two images.

Personally, I like your layout with the island the best, if you can add a prep sink to the island. The keeps the work zone on the left side (out of the potential traffic path) with a pretty good flow, and then has a separate clean up zone on the right.