Thanks for all of the great feedback! We too are concerned about seeing the kitchen from the front door. It does make for a very informal space. Starting from scratch we would not have designed a house this way, but we are trying to make the best use out of the space we have. We had contemplated moving the kitchen down to the dining/laundry area as suggested. The big problem with that setup is we would have to give up the laundry room, and it would make for a pretty large dining room area that I�m not sure we would fully utilize. It would also require a decent amount of work, to move doors, electrical, plumbing, add windows, etc. I do like the idea of a sliding door leading out to the porch area though! The rear family room currently does not exist, as I had it drawn on the original floor plan. That is a future addition that may or may not happen, just depending on how long we stay in the home. Currently there is a non-conditioned sunroom where that family room would be located (so we still have to keep an entry into that area). The front living room is the only true living space the house currently contains. I agree regarding formal living spaces. My parents have a formal living room, and that room is absolutely never used (other than to store coats when guests come over). I too agree about swapping the living room furniture arrangement. I am not fond of having to walk in front of the television when entering the home from the front door. However, to swap the setup and create a hallway with the couch, we greatly decrease the useable space in the living room. You also are greeted by a television set and the back of a couch when you first walk in the door, vs. looking at the front of a couch and chairs. Again, it�s definitely not ideal, and it would be great to have a separate foyer. I�m kind of torn about the concern over venting the cooktop. Growing up, my parents did not have a vent over their range, other than the undersized vent that was built-in to the microwave. There were never any issues with fumes or smells. Our main concern with the island cooktop is the traffic jam that seems likely to occur with having the sink, stove, and dishwasher directly all in the same general area. We also would like to have the island completely open, as it seems that everyone likes to congregate around an island. We just really didn�t want to see the refrigerator when you walk in the front door. As liriodendron suggested, the island cooktop does create the "cooking show" effect. I think we are leaning towards moving the stove to the outside wall. I�ve included some updated shots of the kitchen layout, along with some shots of layout if we were to swap the kitchen and dining room areas. I�ve added a second window to the kitchen area, which would bring in more light to the kitchen, allow us to better center the sink and cabinets, and allow for more counter space between the sink and the refrigerator. Photos if we were to swap the kitchen and dining room areas:

I like it. I think you're going to have good storage and a nice work flow. Definitely use boxes or furniture or something to simulate the island and do some play cooking to determine how wide you like your aisles to be. Some of us like a bit wider than the recommended 48", some less. I thought I was going for 54" but I recently decided to widen mine to 62". Some people might consider that too wide but I really like it. When facing the range, how long are the counters on the left and right sides? I ask because you may have room for a prep sink to the right of the range. That would make your kitchen even more efficient with all clean-up on island and all prep/cook on perimeter. Of course, the island could also be used for secondary prep, if needed. What is #6? It looks like an appliance of some kind? I would put the DW in #14 with the most used dishes and utensils in #21. This is especially important if you don't go with a prep sink on the perimeter. This way someone can prep on the closest path from refrigerator to stove without crossing over the clean-up person. And this also leaves your dishes closest to the dining area to make setting the table easier and the person doing that needn't enter the prep/cook zone. Make sure you do a deep enough overhang for seating. Here are the recommendations. Some folks here like the overhang a bit deeper than these so you might also want to mock up something to see what works best for you. Definitely don't go shallower. And the items stored under really do need to be items not needed often like, maybe, seasonal dishes and serving pieces because you would get tired of crawling under there to get things very often. I would use pull-out shelves so you can at least bring things closer to grab.

With a large family I think it would be better to have a second sink in the kitchen, so I'd go with option 2 with some tweaking. I'd void the corner (or if possible use it from the other side) and have the DW b/w the sink and the fridge. On the other side of the sink you can have narrow open shelves for cutting boards, like this. Next to the tall window you can consider a hutch like cab for pantry storage. You can have textured glass fronts (or maybe on the sides too). If you have room on the other side of the tall window, a shallow cab can be quite useful.

If you want an entry area, put up a wall and have one. We have a home now where someone knocked out the wall between the nice entry and the living room and we basically put the wall back with a shoe bench and shelf arrangement (freestanding because we didn’t want to do construction work) because it just flows better that way. We also just looked at another house which we decided not to go for after much deliberation in part because if we opened it up to get much needed space, we’d end up with a big box with the front door entering right into everything, like a small apartment layout. Houses, especially houses with kids and lots of visitors, need some way to control the flow of traffic and direct people to where they should take off coats and boots and what have you. If you have room for a mud room, great, but if not - entry area is a necessity, IMO. And people are going to be beyond bored with HGTV style everything probably sooner rather than later - next year or the year after it’ll be some other designer and they will be putting walls up because everyone is sick of open plan and always being on display while cooking. If this is your forever home then do what you like and what feels good to you, not what’s popular on HGTV. (If you were going to flip the house then I might be saying something different.) Personally, if my front door were that close to my kitchen, I’d really really really want some kind of wall for privacy. Who wants all your mid-meal cooking mess to be on display to anyone who comes to the door?