What an awful loss! I'm so sorry. I echo rosie's concern about the long counter without much of a purpose. I also noticed wasted space in your butler's pantry and the huge amount of space given over to your coat closet. Do you really need one that large? I decided you don't ;-) and came up with this plan (concept only, not drawn to scale.) The smaller coat closet allowed me to make the butler's pantry large enough to also accommodate a walk-in pantry with pocket door. I moved the fridge over so that it's not immediately visible from the great room, put the DW and sink on that same wall with the sink under the relocated window. There should be room for about a 20" cabinet between sink cab and corner Susan. I moved the range to be parallel to the long side of the now rectangular island with prep sink. You should have roughly 42" of cabinets on either side of the range. I estimate the island to be 90" long. Depth could be as much as 64.5": 2 rows of back to back 24" deep cabs plus 15" overhang for seating, plus 1.5" counter overhang over cabs. One row of cabs will be accessible beneath the overhang. You may not need that much storage, in which case, you can make the island narrower and have plenty of room for stools at the island without infringing on great room space. Oops, I forgot to eliminate the window from the pantry. You can also make the window over the sink larger than is shown. If you're willing to make these changes to the butler's pantry and coat closet, then there are more options than what I've drawn for your kitchen. It's a good space but IMO you need to put storage and counter space where it's most useful.

Thanks for the suggestion! You're the 2nd person to suggest flipping the bathroom and pantry. Makes my walk during conference calls a lot longer, but i think it's probably the right thing to do. Though hubby wants it to be a "short" walk from back door to pantry so he's not "carrying groceries halfway across the darn house!". Yes, the upstairs closet is a "laundry" (I forgot to change the label). The master closet is massive bc I work in Fashion and have a lot of clothes ;) It's been my childhood dream to have the kids bedrooms share a jack and jill bath. The hope is that with the tub/toilet having a proper door, privacy of pocket doors isn't a big deal for the sink area.

Do you have counter space or room to stack the dishes? In a perfect world you could scrape the dishes and put them to soak to deal with later. Is this an option in your laundry closet? I did a fancy dinner not too long ago and did a quick load of dishes into the dishwasher (lucky it is quiet) and did the 1 hour wash, then stacked quickly to load the next -- ended up with 3 loads and the dinner took about 3 1/2 hours -- very formal and lots of drinks between and during courses.

Below is an illustration of an exercise I sometimes go through on a project to point out the efficiency of the layout, how much of the house is dedicated to circulation space and how much room there is for furniture. Circulation space is unavoidable but the less there is the more efficient the layout is.This just addresses efficiency. Other design flaws I see are how insect screens are handled at the double doors in the dining and guest bedroom? Why are there doors there and not windows? Where will a guest entering from the front have their coat hung? If the door from the guest bath to the family room survives, where will the light switch go? Why such a big work triangle in the kitchen? Work triangles work best when they are a triangle. And the list is longer but I have to get back to work.