Buy a different house ? At the very least, involve an architect and tell that architect your budget at the first meeting.

In the meantime, use the family room as a "dining room, and the Liv/dining as an all purpose living /family/gathering space.

Why? Ar 10.5 feet in width, the family room will be nearly impossible to arrange for comfort and seating........

For what you are thinking about, you need an architect and a really hefty budget.

I don't know about opening up the stairs, but I wouldn't completely remove the wall between the kitchen and foyer. If you leave a stub wall, you can separate the clean-up area and block the view from anyone entering the house. If you need an entry closet, move it toward the breakfast area; if not, omit, and you could add a shallow pantry cabinet. This plan uses a range, or you could add an UC oven on the island.

Wall oven option, with fridge moved to the right of the chase:

I think I'd ditch the door to the outside from the breakfast area, remove the bay window and straighten that wall. Then I'd flop the kitchen with the breakfast area and have the sink under the back windows. You already have a slider to the back yard from the family room, so that separate door isn't necessary and you'll have more light coming into your kitchen. Actually, now that I think of it, I might remove the entire back wall and align it with the family room back wall. Will give you a ton more space to play with. Of course, that would mean re-doing the roof line, but that's where an architect comes in.

thank you MG for taking the time to "draw it up". yes the bay window would need to be raised, we have to do the windows anyway so could do that at the same time and mimic the same on the opposite side of the house.

Just curious as to your budget...................

i figure i can do a nice kitchen for $60-70k depending on my appliance selection. total budget for the hole house including a pool, $400-500k.

IMO a new house would be the answer. Will this increase the value of the house by 500k beccause if not no way to do this. IMO what you are planning is an entire new house and that budget will go quickly. Moving or redoing stairs to a completely new design is huge $$$$$ I think you need to have a good conversation with an architect to see what can be accomplished in your budget before asking strangers for advice. I understand the need for this change but honestly not going to happen in that budget better off to knock it down and start over IMO.

I guess I'm glad I don't live where you guys do. I just finished a total gut of a house with 2/3rds the square footage for $200k Cdn.

I see a couple of you have assumed I would not engage an architect or designer. You also assume I am solely relying on opinions found here. I appreciate everyone's thoughts. The purpose of my post was for additional ideas to give myself a headstart on eliminating ideas that won't work before engaging n expert. Going to an architect without eliminating the thoughts in my head that won't make sense is just wasting their time and mine. It doesn't prohibit them from telling me what should be done, but it does save me the expense of them telling me something I could have already heard won't make sense from a design perspective.

Floating stairs was just one thought on how to add site lines across the house. Another way is to cut back the walls. I made floating stairs in my last house by eliminating the risers, and custom welding a railing. 100 in steel, $35/hr labor and new maple stairs cost me maybe $2k all in.

My apologies if that's not the purpose of the design dilemma section of the site.