The powder room question is a bit of a stinker. We've woven back and forth on it for several months and finally fell on the side of keeping it. On one hand, we feel that we under-use the room, and we could really up the "wow" factor on the first floor by removing it. On the other hand, we have also admitted that it does have current and future utility, and we feel like that we should be exceedingly reluctant to spend money to remove a functioning bathroom from a 1.5 bath house with enough bedrooms to accommodate a family. It's both a shame to eliminate it, and a shame to leave it in place, but for entirely different reasons. An idea occurred to me while musing over the suggestions that have been made. What do you think of this as an approach? Suppose that we leave the PR in place, and build the kitchen around it. This eliminates all the outstanding repair issues the house has (all are in the addition) and fixes our frustration over the kitchen. We don't reclaim the back view we might have had, but we can address light issues with some combination of improved lighting, side windows, and skylights. I think we could also minimize the offense of the wall the "sticks out" by decorating it - maybe we put something of visual interest on the wall, or perhaps we use it to hang some pots: At the completion of that move, we've got a functional kitchen, and a functional powder room. Here's a rendering I made while playing around, which incorporates some of the smaller modifications suggested - move the sink to the long wall; consider a larger sink; vary the size of the cabinets; conceal the vent. Once kitchen project is accomplished, we can build savings back up and decide where we're going next. One idea, per my previous post, might be to cut back the wall that is partitioning the living and dining areas. Another project might be re-configuring the layout on an upper floor to accommodate an second bath. Perhaps when that is done, we decide the powder room is no longer as needed. Or maybe, once we know our final family size and the kid(s) are older, we can drop back to a single bath. When/if we're ready to nix the PR, rather than redo the entire kitchen, we could remove the PR, and repurpose the now-open space to create an eat-in kitchen. Here's roughly what we'd have, if we removed the PR and touched nothing else - the back door and PR window are in the same place. Not that it matters, but I wonder if this may be close to the original configuration of the addition. It would explain what this space was doing prior to the installation of a PR and a W/D stack, with an off-center door.

Dear Jennifer, I see you’re not getting any traction…Here is a partial floor plan based upon your field dimension supplied. It doesn’t look like your sketch…exactly. Your drawings don’t need to be pretty but you’ll need to supply all the information if you want to get others input. If you correct the dimensions shown you can get an accurate floor plan to work from. Then you should start to receive input. Once you have your floor plan you should space plan every possible layout option you can think of (like shown here) that meets or exceeds your needs established to make your home improvement project as successful as possible for as long as possible. Your home improvement project should retain its value and continue to pay you dividends long after you complete it. Demand Better Performance Joe Brandao Kitchen Performance Consultant

It would be well worth the price, to hire a experienced interior designer who has plenty of construction and renovation experience. H/she can do detailed measurements and develop scale drawings for each space. Start there. Don’t start any demo until you have detailed overall plan then you can select finishes (tile, flooring, cabinetry, mirrors, hardware etc.). This is how to do a cost effective, creative, on budget project.

This is a big project and will be very expensive. Before you do anything, think about how much money you want to spend on this renovation, and then hire an interior designer to help you put together a master plan. You'll get more accurate quotes from contractors when they have something to estimate from. Then you can do the build-out in phases. By having that master plan, you can make sure all the subsequent phases will look cohesive.