Hi folks! First time here on these forums. Lots of upcoming home projects, the first of which is the Kitchen.

We bought this 100 m2 / 1076 ft2 condo, and want to improve the layout of the primary room which contains the kitchen, dining area, and living room.

First some photos of the space

as it is right now:

Here's a floor plan (all measurements in centimeters)

You can see in the floor plan and photos above that the current kitchen has a straight run along the south wall, and then has a flared angle on each edge. This wastes quite a bit of space in our opinion.

Also, we want to bring an L-shaped corner dining table (photo below) and place it in the north easy corner of the room. With the current kitchen there would be less than 1m/3ft of space between the table and the island... waay to cramped.

We also plan to remove the triangle shaped wall you see at the west end of the kitchen in the photos in order to allow more light in the room and make the room feel bigger.

Here's the latest draft of our design:

A few wish items for our kitchen:

• induction stove with extractor
• full height pantry with either max pull-out drawers or full-pull out where the shelves are attached to the door
• in the EU, standard fridges are smaller than in the US with only a single hinged door and integrated into the cabinets
• oven at waist height with storage above and below
• preserve natural light and keep the whole room open

Some comments on the design:

• The only natural light is from the west wall, this is a major concern
• There is only about a 2 meter run of above-counter cabinets, above the sink
• The peninsula will be completely open to the living room (and with the extractor, no hood blocking the line of sight)
• to keep light flowing and prevent awkward corner cabinets, we plan to put some open shelves on the south wall at the base of the peninsula. underneath the shelves will go the Kitchen Aid and coffee grinder

On zones

I've read the kitchen zone faq, and unfortunately our kitchen will have so make some compromises.

• Cleaning zone is between the sink and fridge
• Prep zone is the corner space between sink and range
• Cooking zone is the range obviously, with a little serving zone on the other side that could hold overflow pans and bowls when cooking
• The fridge is rather far from the action, and the pantry even further!
• When the pantry door or drawers inside are pulled out, it will partially block access to the main entry hall
• Opening the oven and fridge at the same time will be difficult

We also considered a U layout, but felt that we lost a lot of openness in the room.. and that it would be possible to be trapped in the crook of the U.

Advice would be most appreciated! Are there obvious tweaks we can make to improve this design?

Extra Info

Our family size is 2 adults and 1 toddler. On normal weekdays there is one cook in the kitchen. On weekends we often have two cooks in the kitchen.

During normal times, we tended to host friends and family over several times a month, sometimes potluck, bust mostly us cooking and serving. The kitchen in our current rental is a box room separate from the main living and dining, so the cook was always isolated from the fun. In this new house we want to ensure that guests can relax but still engage with the cook(s).

We're working with a local carpenter to build us cabinets

Here is the dining table we want to bring: