Ok I will try!

Photos of your current space might also help bring in a few more comments from people. It sounds like you are planning multiple architectural changes with walls taken down and built with a general reconfiguration of several rooms, and you still have an upstairs bathroom situation you don't like. You'll find this out as you move forward with getting quotes for the project, but just to give you a heads up, this could billow out in costs to more than you might be anticipating. I would guess easily over $100K depending on labor costs in your area, and that's with economy cabinetry and finishes and even doing some of the work yourselves. You'll probably need to hire a structural engineer for the wall reconfiguration more so than just an architect. People have gotten burned using architects for jobs that required structural changes. Pushing the kitchen more toward the living room will involve plumbing, electrical and possibly gas line alterations, which will further expand the budget.

When someone is considering making this many dramatic alterations to the layout, you will start to see comments of people here in Houzz threads suggesting perhaps a move to a home better suited to the family's needs. The money you put into a renovation on this scale cannot be recovered at sale, so this needs to be a long-term home or valuable to you in some way to make the loss of investment worth it.

Assuming you want to proceed, here are a few suggestions:

• To make the budget go as far as it can, avoid moving walls around in those small areas like the closet and powder room. It will cost a lot and won't make a dramatic difference in your space, especially since you seem to have lots of room to work with in the main areas.
• If you're needing more of a mudroom area for snow melt, would it be possible to build on a small entry room and expand rather than trying to reconfigure existing space? It's generally more cost-effective to not add on space, but a vestibule area might not be too expensive in this particular case and would spare wall re-configuration costs.
• Sounds like you're not one of those people who wants or needs a large overhang for seating in the kitchen. Make sure you do keep adequate space for a dining table, though. I'm wondering if you could move your dining area to what is now the open space next to the kitchen and then keep the existing kitchen space and also expanding the kitchen into what is now the dining room? You seem to be seeking more kitchen space, and you'd have to move the stove to a different place to do this, but this would give you a huge kitchen and make the need for a separate butler's pantry obsolete. You could put some arch or other division between the newly-expanded kitchen and relocated dining room to give you the quietness and privacy you are seeking.
• If you get the expanded kitchen space you need and keep the cabinetry budget under $35K by choosing an economy line, you'd have $65K of a hypothetical $100K budget for the other work which would go fast but might get you where you wanted to be with the extra windows. Hopefully some other more experienced layout people will comment. Post some photos of your current space if you can, please.

Without a scaled drawing and measurements, I don't know if this will fit, or if it's close enough to what you want from a remodel, or if the location of the fridge is just too strange:

The grid is the area with the bay, plus the fridge.

ETA, I used the measurements on the plan perimeter and guessed at others. It looks as if you have more space than it appears on the original drawing, but after looking at your pics below, there seems to be a difference in the large window bay, than what's on your drawing.

Jack-and-Jill... and FRED! LOL.

If you can carefully measure your rooms, windows, doorways, etc., it will almost certainly be worth it for the advice you can get here once you have a 2-d drawing to scale.

I would take the space from the dining room.

@dormelles thank you. You are correct - such major changes bring up the subject of selecting a different house. We definitely bought for the location and the lot. To give you a sense of how desirable our neighborhood is, our new neighbors bought their house for 1M, tore the whole thing down leaving only the foundation and the facade, and are building a whole new home. here are some pics of ours. It is a very nice house as it is, it is just a bit dated and needs some sprucing up. Most of the homes in this area with the square footage we wanted are pretty McMansion-y like this. We could absolutely keep the kitchen layout the same, extend it out a bit towards the EIK adding some more counter and maybe a 2nd sink where the bay window is, and partially wall off the great room. We have a gas line roughed in from the basement but it is unused right now as the current stove is induction. I’m assuming the ovens are electric. The big costs in the kitchen aside from cosmetic changes would be adding more windows and relocating the fridge to the other side of the island and plumbing water to it. Here are a few views of the space:

Are there 2 living rooms? One formal and one informal? Can you relocate the dining room into the front living room or even move it to where the bay window is and expand the kitchen fully into the dining room area?

You could do a nice trimmed opening between each space if you are looking for more definition...

Post more dimensions and the first floor plan and you will get lots ideas !

@Serenity N This is all so gorgeous as is! Thanks for the photos.

You have a beautiful home!

Debbi yes so I should have labeled them better! The previous owners used what I label the “living room “ as the dining room. They used the “dining room” as their home office. The room with the sliders to the far right is the great room. Right now we’re using the living room as just that - thinking of putting a gas fireplace on that exterior wall - and using the “dining room” as the kids playroom. My worry in expanding the kitchen to the left, into the dining room, is that it takes out an entire room. It sort of makes it more open concept, unless I put a full wall back up between the kitchen and the EIK area where the window is, and create a hallway or series of openings to get you from the living room all the way to the great room. That back left corner of the house does get amazing light and it would make a great kitchen. It would then be adjacent to the living room, but far away from the great room. The trick would still be figuring out how to get some structure out of the big open space in the back of the house. Because of that, I think it does make sense to extend it towards the great room and try to close off one of the doorways to get the left side of the kitchen less “cut up” with all the doorways.

Your photos look like after photos from a remodel! Of course you should get what you want. I just wanted to speak up that you have a lovely home if you change nothing.