Hi! Thank you so much for all the replies! We were a little desperate for some advice and it sounds like we really need a designer to help us! We're looking at people now.
HKO HKO: the sink in the island was an attempt to maintain the kitchen triangle - though we know the length makes it hard. We know a U shape would probably work, but it's even hard to fit a kitchen table in that model. The back wall would be just counters, not upper cabinets, as a result of the big window - so it felt like we were really losing out on storage. The fridge being far away is of course not ideal. But if we place the fridge closer, the rest of the counter space sort of hangs outside the main kitchen space, and we feel like we'd have a functionally short kitchen. But the point is well taken, and something a designer can potentially help us with. Regarding pot storage: I have a lot of beautiful cast iron. The most used pieces would go in the cabinets, but we wanted a space to display some of the other pieces that go less used.
Jan Moyer: Thank you! We're on it!
Flo Mangan: We could put the sink underneath the window on the back wall, leaving the island sink-free. We were worried about the distance from the sink to the fridge, but it seems like that is a good option, from what you're saying. The further you drag the sink backwards in the room, the further the triangle stretches and the more the island obstructs that triangle. We could move the sink within the island, displacing it to the left or right so it isn't right in the middle of the workspace. Or we could drag the island down a bit in the space (but not much, because it starts to impede traffic within the kitchen itself, and as you say this is a high traffic area from the backdoor/mudroom to the rest of the house. Stealing 2' would be a DREAM; ugh, we wouldn't have had so much trouble with this! (If you meant 2 inches, by chance, yes, that is possible - we'd just cannibalize the 2 inches from the island). But if you meant 2 feet, here are my thoughts: So, the counter is 24". The space between the counter and the island is 46". The island is 44". And the space between the island and the back wall is 36". We could theoretically still steal the space from the island. We could make the space between the counter and the island 42" (stealing 4 inches), and then the island we would need to steal 20 inches from... So that would make a 24" island... Which probably means we shouldn't try an island in the first place. But the room feels quite long and the space doesn't feel like it does well without something like an island in the middle. This space is quite challenging because of how narrow it is.
We could make the space between the counter and the island 46", the island 36", and the back wall 44". We would have to move the sink to the back wall between the oven and the range. That would probably require us to drag the fridge up into the kitchen more to be closer to the workspaces. Our worry with this is that the counter that would sit in the bottom portion of the room near the family room would then feel like dead, dangling counter space - not part of the kitchen, not utilized. This would make our kitchen (functionally) 13x13 feet, with a lot of empty space at the bottom. Wouldn't feel like a good utilization of the space, and we would be going back to the small kitchen + breakfast nook model we were originally presented with by the architect (albeit the kitchen and nook would be flipped from his original model).
Thank you so much!!!
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cambria ella - thread (incl. one bad experience w/damage not covered by cambria)
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