I remember the craze, in the 1980s, to strip every old piece of furniture to "expose the beautiful wood grain." And you'd see pieces in the antiques shows/shops with these crazy grains, mismatched woods, etc. My mom always said, "the guy who made this would be beside himself to see his ingenious usage of scrap wood exposed like this. If he thought you were going to stain it, he'd have at least made sure to use the same species of wood, and he'd have hidden the crazy grain on the shelf or in the back." Oh yes! & I, personally, think the appearance of old wood rarely benefits from application of poly. When I rebuilt a pantry window (1913 house) I found the casing was painted quarter-sawn oak. I'm sure it was always painted - and that much of the house was trimmed with scrap wood. That window remains uncased while I do other things. I haven't uncovered the other casing to confirm my scrap-wood theory. If it's not all nice 1/4-sawn I'll find somewhere else to use that and put something new (paintable) on the window. My first experience stripping paint was in the 1950's, as a child. My mother had an impulse to strip all the oak woodwork in her 1911 house and, as always, enlisted the passel of kids to help. We used stryp-eze - the harshest stuff almost - and no masks or gloves. We did a staircase, 8-10 double hung windows, some doorways. It's not something I would recommend, obviously, the use of the kids (or stryp-eze) but it's an indication that stripping paint is not rocket science. In her next house mom stripped '30's era "blonding" from a whole lot more oak woodwork, without help from any kids but this time she wore gloves and used a LYE solution & a WIRE BRUSH. (Blonding involves grain filler, I believe.) It was, for some reason, her habit to stain wood without any further finish and that made for an easier job - at least one that required less finesse and skill. So, besides self-indulgently remembering a couple of stories, my point is that it's tedious and annoying to strip paint but it doesn't require that much skill and it can easily be diy.

I've always thought the circle kitchen would be great for an urban loft, or something. The real kind where it's more about the arc welder or the fume extractor for the turps, and no real cooking is happen. Great for snacks, and cool, right? But this isn't for small spaces. It's actually for big spaces that require little of kitchens. I also think this isn't even for daily use because the cabling necessary for the 180 degree spin is going to fail at some point from constant pushing and pulling. Most of the designs on that blog, however, look like student projects rather than like anything meant for use. A better big space hide-a-kitchen design project that really is for sale is the Bulthaup B2. It's really inefficient, as shown, and stuff will fall the surface. There's practically nil counter space, and one's crockery and groceries must fit the storage space, because it is so customized, but it's a real kitchen where you could cook real food. When we had a thread about it before, there were people who chimed in about how they loved it, and we finally figured out that they loved how they'd use the pieces in their own concepts (e.g., one included a big farm table), rather than as shown. :) I.e., the total concept may wander too far into engineer-guy-design, but the pieces are cool and can be used. :)

Mark, thank you for mentioning things to consider. Would it be reasonable to switch the sink and dishwasher? That would put counter space on both sides of the sink. I agree the elevator is tight in that space but unfortunately we cannot change it. This house is built on waterfront property so houses are all elevated and three stories including elevators (that we will likely barely use). We are thinking of eliminating the stop in the garage which eliminates the door. The garage cannot be made bigger so we will not park a car on the side where the side door is. That will be the storage space side. Overall the mudroom/pantry space is not what we would have designed so we are going to eliminate the built-in when you first enter since that would be really tight. Most homes in this area make similar compromises since lots are 50’ wide with a 6’ offset on both sides. It really limits what one can do. The powder room is not actually open to above. That’s just the staircase. I’m not sure why the plan looks that way. We have the ability to completely redesign the kitchen layout within the footprint that exists. We could bring in a kitchen designer if necessary but that wasn’t really in the budget but I don’t even know what it would cost. I didn’t realize how poorly the architect planned the kitchen until now.

Thank you everyone for your time and great feedback. Let me try to answer some of your questions and clarify a few things… The kitchen and current dining space combined is 11’5” deep by 23’8” wide. Our budget is around 20K and we could and are willing to do some plumbing or move a gas line for our oven/stove. We recently replaced our dishwasher and oven/stove. Our fridge is still fine but could be replaced if necessary (but we don’t want to spend 6-10K on a new counterdepth fridge). So the budget would be primarily for cabinets, countertops, any plumbing or gas line work, etc. We are one of the largest houses in the neighborhood so we aren’t wanting to spend a ton on the kitchen and overprice the house for the area, but for the size of our house our current kitchen is not working (we only have one drawer for silverware and then a small 12” drawer for utensils…it’s just not very user friendly or functional) and needs redone. We tinkered with flipping the current kitchen and dining space but run into some problems. 1) The large 72” wide picture window in the dining space is only 29” up from the floor, so it would be below the cabinet and countertop. The smaller 36”x36” above the current sink would likely need to be altered to fit the space more appropriately. We have stucco so it is a lot more involved and costly to change window sizes or placement leaving us pretty much stuck with the present windows. 2) We have soffits above our current kitchen cabinets that we were hoping to be able to open up but we realized the one along the top wall over the sink is filled with plumbing from our 2nd floor main bathroom as well as HVAC. Too costly to move for our budget so it would have to stay and look out of place all alone over there without cabinets or something else to help camouflage it. The one along the shorter wall can be taken out and we plan to do so in order to have taller cabinets on that wall. There was a wall between the kitchen and current dining room that we took out (only a small 30” deep stud wall remains next to the fridge). We have a standard fridge and would like to try to decrease the amount of space it takes and projects from the wall. We realized there is a double wall on the right wall in-between the kitchen and bathroom. We have decided to move the fridge there because we can recess it back 3-4” making it appear closer to a counterdepth fridge. Our current “living room” acts more like a family room for us, but we also just refinished our basement in the last year and that area serves more as our present family room. Since it is a large room, it would be a bit awkward to put our kitchen table there and have some extra space in the living room that leaves us wondering how it would be used. Our current “family room” with the fireplace is a room we don’t use because our fireplace isn’t functioning. It is merely a room we walk through in order to access our backyard and why we thought taking some space from the room for a mudroom might be a good option. Our current kitchen table is large (40x72) with a bench and 4 tall/high back chairs. It takes up a lot of space in the current “dining room” space and why we were tinkering with a smaller table for the kitchen and moving the larger table to a new dining room in the back. However, it does make sense that we would likely no longer use that second table and would be a wasted space. @emilyam819 Yes, we will be removing the small stud wall by the current fridge to allow more freedom in the design. Please see note above about the wall removal and possible fridge relocation. @latifolia Our current dining area is the left part of the open space in front of the large picture window. We are considering putting a smaller table there so we can still have a place to eat yet have more room for cabinets and then moving our large kitchen table to the back room with the fireplace. It currently is an unused space as the fireplace is nonfunctional and why we are considering making a mudroom back there as well. But we understand dining rooms often go unused so maybe that area is better served as a den or office space like you suggested.Our laundry room is in the basement as we have a laundry chute and don’t have the room to put it on the 1st or 2nd floors. @Cherie “Too bad you can't remove the walls.”—I know, right!?! It’s so frustrating! But we have sulked about it too long and need to accept it and move on, but it is such a bummer in our books!