Oh Boxer! Those pantries are simply stunning, especially the first with the french doors. I wish I could do that. >>sighTinycastles--I had thought about the in-swing double pantry doors, but I don't have enough depth for them to fit inside the pantry. It's only 24" deep and the shelves are 12" deep. That leaves only 12" of wall space on the sides for a door to rest when pushed in. It's a great idea though! I'm not sure I can go there with the Viking for cost and their issues. Please report back on your satisfaction with it. I'm curious to see. Thanks. LL--I'm considering two brands of wall ovens. One is about 23.75" deep and the other is 24.25" deep. Whew! Glad I checked on that. I'll have to go to the house and see how the fireplace feels moved over towards the door. We've got it mocked up with ladders and old interior doors now and there's definetly not too much there now, but maybe somewhere in that area something can be fudged. Thank you. Laughable--what a great idea! If I was going with a single-door, I probably would have done solid wood. If french doors, definetly glass. The fabric attached to the back of the door idea is genius! (I don't think an actual fabric panel itself swinging loosely is a good idea in my kitchen.) My wheels are turning! Thanks!

We also converted from framed to frameless. All drawers. We did this first before making final decisions. We got so much more useable space, we decided not to have a pantry. We got more counter space. Today, it is still a happy choice. We kept moving forward step by step, re-using old counter material and fillers like plywood until we bought a new fridge. Even though it was a tall 24"wide one, we decided to hide it down the hall and buy an undercounter fridge. That shows you how much we loved having ever more counter! Later we recessed our wall oven and put a piece of counter in front of it. 9" by 24". More counter! -- Deep long drawers will astound you. They bring objects to you. Today, you get on all fours to rummage around in the dark. It's a disincentive. Your kitchen has a wide aisle. You could make your new counter overhang by many inches and still have a wide aisle. With full extension drawers it is not significant when your counter overhang is large. Make uppers deep, with frosted glass fronts, that swing up. We installed Ikea's Akurum base cabinets upside down (they are symmetric), so we got more room to install the deep drawers. Before doing it, I posted questions about this in GW and in Ikeafans; the response was the wildest hecklefest I could have imagined. But it worked and it increased drawer volume. Later I removed the crossbeams (MDF) under the new counter. More volume. It all worked. Our counter is 2cm thick; this also gave us more space. Prices are $24 Ikea 70107069 RATIONELL N 24"w fully-extendable (Blum M-height) $30 Ikea 90109977 RATIONELL N 24"w fully-extendable (Blum C or D-height) Deep Drawers and glides. They come with the clips for the fronts, but not the fronts. See http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/kitchbath/msg0718520230561.html I added to this thread earlier today. In that post there is more information on other topics related to small kitchens. Here is a link that might be useful: Small kitchens HAVE to have __

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!

I like what @snappity suggested. I have some renderings for you. The app I'm using has a trial version with some limitations (printing, saving, exporting). If you search "free home designer software " or some similar phrase you may find others. I'm not sure what you meant by a shelf over the fridge, but I think you definitely need something above the fridge, and probably side/end panels (?) as well. I didn't pull the pantry cabs fwd, since I think the panel and the upper above the fridge will be 24" deep. If the length of the wall (abt. 80) includes door trim and the electric switch then I believe you'd only have room for the pantry cabs and the fridge. I hope you have a nearby counter for things you take out the fridge. In my galley kitchen I do have counter next to the french door fridge and the wall oven, but I always use the counter 70" across from them (no traffic passes b/w the counters though).