I like it! The one change that I would suggest is reversing the oven and MW warming drawer so that the MW is closer to the fridge.

Are the two windows still slightly different sizes? If not, I'd consolidate them in the middle rather than having two ones separated like that. If they are different sizes, then I think what you have works pretty well to disguise it.

Thanks GreenDesigns! You have helped me many, many times on this kitchen and other projects. We are on to the switch of the steam oven and regular wall oven you suggested. The way it is shown in the floor plan is reversed from the elevation picture my DH made (the floor plan is accurate not the elevation picture). It makes more sense to have the steam oven (the smaller one with drawer below) on the side of the fridge due to the door swing of this oven. We haven't worked out the microwave location yet (not shown) but will likely do a drawer microwave.

The windows are now identical in size. I will order a twin window to the existing kitchen window. (I have decided to add a transom to the smaller window I had and use the combo in my laundry room). I am reluctant to move the left hand window more to the centre, because where it is shown it allows a much better view. The one on the right will not offer a great view, but it is the light we need. These windows are both on the side of the house so the one on the right faces the neighbour's side house (about 15 -20 feet away), and the one on the left faces the neighbour's backyard.

The one thing I do regret is not being able to raise the DWs a bit. In our old plan they were on 39 inch counters, so raised 3 inches.

Can you check back later (maybe tomorrow) as I want to post my aisle sizes and and some more elements to see if all that works out?

Thanks again, GreenDesigns!

Carol

This post was edited by OntarioMom on Mon, Jul 8, 13 at 9:48

I remember that you had quite a lot of things to accomplish here, and although it might not be everyone's ideal layout, I think you're getting what you wanted with task areas fairly efficiently situated. It's just hard to have everything perfect in a long, skinny space with the doorways and things you have. I have to admit that in my kitchen, like I worry about with yours, there is an issue with dish storage being somewhat separated from fridges, but that's where compromises come in... There are always some. Your dining area and in kitchen eating area complicates that further. No way to place your dish storage and the fridge in reachable spots from every area. It's amazing how long it can take to work things through, so I applaud your willingness to keep at it and make it the best you can.

One thing I'd feel strongly about changing, and I don't remember if there's a reason it's not possible, is to put both dishwashers on the peninsula, with the sink in between...Then consolidate your dish storage on the end of the island, instead of splitting the dws and the dish storage. --- To clarify: swap sink and dishwasher on the peninsula, then put the 2nd dw to the left of the sink, where you now show plates, bowls, and cutlery storage. Put that storage next to the pegged dish storage on the island.
That's my 2 cents' worth, anyway. ;-)

Thanks very much for coming back to comment, Rhome. You have been a tremendous help guiding me to this design. You make good points this time as well. We avoided putting the DWs on either side of the sink as it seemed if we put one to the right of the sink (even if sink was moved left) when the right DW was opened we would not be able to put the glasses away in the corner upper cabinet. My Mom's DW was very close to her corner and it was a real pain reaching the cupboards overhead when unloading the DW. You had to put glasses on the counter, close up the DW and then place the glasses in overhead cupboard. However, this con may not be as bad as the con you were thinking with having the second DW on the end of island. We also felt the more the sink moved to right the less the dirty dishes would be seen as people went through the main passage way to enter our great room and dining room area.

As per fridge location, we will have a bar fridge in the closet in the dining room with milk, juice etc in it. It will be a long journey with milk from main fridge to dining room table for sure. We thought we would designate some dish storage (maybe all of our old dishes) to the pantry over the ovens for closer access to snack table. A challenge, as you said is to have dish storage close to DW, and both eating areas. I am not sure we will need two dish drawers as shown.

Thanks for your comments. Please let me know if you see anything else. Also, if you can let me know of any unmentioned cons of the second DW on end of island that would be great. I need to put more thought into the second DW location.

Carol

This post was edited by OntarioMom on Mon, Jul 8, 13 at 21:00

If you had a dw to the right of the sink, swapping right where they're now shown, you still have space between it and the other counter and cupboards... Not a lot, but much better than none. The more room you could squeeze in there, the better, if you can move the sink and dishwashers to the left at all. (Reduce the shelf? Lengthen the peninsula a few inches?)

The way you have them drawn would not work for me. The 2nd dw is a long, drippy, floor mess from the sink. If you have a lot of dishes, pots, pans, etc...some in large and/or awkward sizes... you can't just load one dw, close it, and start on the next. It's like fitting puzzle pieces together, and part of the advantage of 2 dishwashers is to be able to have more flexibility to fit things into both of them to make the best use of the space. If the arrangement means it's really hard to work with both at once, you lose that advantage. Plus, if/when you have both open, there is NO getting through that aisle. If they're both on the same side, you can still walk behind their open doors. Even if you only have the island one open, it'd be hard for anyone to get through the aisle (to reach a glass or whatever family members have a tendency to do), because of working back and forth from the sink.

Did you ever say how old your kids are? I can't remember. If they're not teens yet, you have a whole different world ahead of you with bodies constantly in the kitchen!

Okay, very, very good follow-up points on the second DW. We don't rinse every dish, but some we do so I don't like the dripping idea from sink to island DW. Maybe we can lengthen the peninsula. I do like the 42 inch high 12 inch deep cabinet on the end of the peninsula to hid the mess a bit (there will also be a raised part behind this peninsula). I will definitely play with this more, act it out, think about it deeply. I appreciate your thoughts. I will say, without lengthening the peninsula, I believe we could squeeze 17 inches between right DW and corner end. I imagine hitting my calves squeezing into the side of a second DW on right, but perhaps this is only in my brain due to past tight DW experiences. One other thought was the second prep area is likely going to be under the window closest to the clean-up sink. I will want to be sure the second DW is not going to impact that area (unless there is a better secondary prep area).

Our kids range from ages 7 (girl) - to 19. The oldest three are boys. I am very familiar with all the eating and hanging in the kitchen associated with teens (and mega grocery costs too).

Carol

This post was edited by OntarioMom on Mon, Jul 8, 13 at 18:13

Even if you don't rinse, don't your dishes collect in the sink? Then someone runs water, and then they're all drippy. ;-) If you can get 17" between the dw and the side cabinets, I think that'd be great. For me, that tight spot would be worth dealing with for the plusses gained in the change to the layout. But it's your kitchen, so I am only here to throw out things for you to consider.

I knew you'd mentioned watching someone play in the living room, so I thought maybe you weren't to the major-kitchen-use stage yet, but you definitely are. I can sure identify with mega grocery bills! Best wishes for you and your family in your new kitchen!

Rhome,

Yup, we always have soggy dishes in the sink. Somehow, I have not trained the clan as well as I would have liked to just put their dishes straight in the DW and not the sink. DH just read your commentary re the second DW and he is convinced it needs to move to the other side of the sink as suggested. I think the peninsula is going to lengthen. Thanks for your probe in that direction.

Regarding the little kid in the living room comment from the past, when I first posted a potential kitchen plan two years ago, the youngest was 5. Too bad they grow up so fast.

I also very much know about kids not putting dishes straight into the dishwasher and how they all grow up TOOOO fast! -My youngest baby is 9. My baby #3 is about to have a baby!

Grandchild on the way --- cool. You get to relive the baby stage all over again on a part time basis. Enjoy!

Carol

OntarioMom, my oldest 3 are boys and my youngest is a girl also. I definitely haven't trained them well enough to be able to locate where the dishwasher is. The boys seem to use tons of dishes, but washing them is a different story. Your kitchen plan looks great!

Alison

LOL Alison. It must be an epidemic. My children are also not good at hanging up towels, getting dirty laundry put directly in laundry bin, and heaven forbid they actually put any clean laundry away without excessive nagging. I think I need to find a forum on teaching kids to do chores.

Carol

Doing as rhome suggests, getting the DW together and moving some of the dish storage over to the end of the island, will make one other thing more convenient. And that's having whatever you usually plate into right near the range top. If you serve from serving bowls, then have those there. If you generally serve into individual plate or bowls, then store those there. It pays dividends in the crucial final minutes of meal prep to just be able to reach down and grab those dishes. You don't have to allow room for the whole service, just the commonest pieces, and only the quantity you use everyday, or whatever your DW rotation requires. I'd store your salad plates elsewhere if they are loaded from stuff that's prepped from the fridge.

If the storage drawer opens towards the sink peninsula, you can stow easily directly from the DW. Then just reach down the side of the island to pull out that drawer when you're ready to plate up.

I'm not usually much of a fan of eating at an island in a kitchen that's open to the DR, but your design has evolved into an elegant solution for that. The island seating is quite separated from the DR, so it works just fine for me.

However, you mention a DW and three kiddos, plus you, but I only see four chairs. OntarioMom , you have definitely earned a place at the island, so take (or add in) a seat for yourself, please!

I think the best plans are those that take awhile to hash through. Mine changed over several years. Sometimes I set it aside in frustration, but each time I took it back up, it was improved. Kudos to you for sticking with it and not just grabbing the first set of ideas you had and running with them.

Look forward to progress updates.

HTH

L.

Thanks Liriodendron for your help. Your comments on other threads helped me get to this point for sure and kept me from giving up in frustration!

Glad you weighed in on the second DW location and gave me even more evidence for moving it. I like your idea for storage of dinner serving plates near the cooktop for rushed plating.

I didn't get time to update the kitchen last night as planned as there was tons of dirt to dig in the back to prepare for the parger to come (sons did get into that job -- so will do chores they like). Lots of different jobs to do as we are GCing this build ourselves. Hopefully I will get more planning done on this kitchen tonight.

As per the seating, I have four kids at home (plus DH and me). Therefore, to accommodate all snacking/eating breakfast together we would need to find room for 6 bar stools! I don't know how easy that would be . It might be better to continue to have all our dinners and some weekend lunches on the dining room table and use the bar stools for snacking and breakfast (which is eaten in shifts).

Carol

There is nothing big time wrong with what you posted and quite a lot looks very good - all of my comments are being "bit-fiddly."

You might consider is having the second dw be an 18" dishwasher possibly paired with a two drawer dishwasher? It would give you a place for big/tall items in the little dw and a good bit of space for plates/bowls/glasses/silverware.

I am in two minds about the ovens and that stack above it... Some of what I'm thinking is mutually exclusive - so think of this as just ideas.

I wonder if you could use some other way of "dooring" the uppers over the ovens. Every time you take something out of one side, its opening and closing two doors right over the counter where you'd like to be stacking up the stuff you're taking out. Maybe use a pair of sliding doors or lift doors. It looks pretty enough, but I think the sliders or open shelves would work better.

If you're going to raise the ovens, I'd go further (like the bottom of the steam oven at counter height), It makes it easier to just pivot with hot stuff and yields another drawer underneath.

Be aware that USING the ovens may likely disturb the chef at the cooktop. By using I mean opening doors and putting stuff in or taking out. Also, having main food storage above the ovens will mean a lot of traffic.

I'm wondering if the ovens should go on the peninsula (at 42" - 48" tall) and cleanup back on the long wall? I'm usually a big fan of perimeter clean up, so I totally don't like this. It would give you some long, straight counter, tho and more configurations for dish storage.

Lastly, two other thinks drawn about island design. Top is about what you have - roughly to scale - but showing the sink in a different location and assuming the dishwasher does move out. I also noted a small issue with seating. The space in the corner "belongs" to the seating on only one side. It's possible you intended the other cabinet to be smaller or something that didn't come through to my tiny mind.

With this or the original layout, I would strongly consider moving the ref to the freezer location and scooting the frzr over. It gets the ref closer to the dish storage and gets the little peoples out of the prep corridor. You could mount a micro over there and get rid of all the snackers too.

If the ref leaves, the ovens can stack where the ref was with trays and baking dishes over and under the stack. The bottom can then be filled with drawers for more food and/or prep gear.

The other think on the bottom of the drawing makes a bigger prep area on the one side of the cooktop by combining pot drawers with the top of the drawers for storing dishes. It moves cooking from being directly in front of the oven doors and makes dumping a pot of hot water not even a step away.

Yet another undrawn think if you don't mind birdie seating would be to put the prep sink on the 51" end and slide the cooktop even closer to that side. Could be used as a pot filler as well as a hand and veg washer.

Another 'nother undrawn think would be prep sink under the window between the ref and the ovens. Bit less convenient, but yields a lot more usable prep space on the island. Another strike is it draws more traffic into the "prep corridor."

Bmorepanic,

So glad to see your post! You have been so very helpful during this long design process. Today you have given me lots of excellent tidbits to think about that are worth working through for sure! I greatly appreciate the time you took to day to brainstorm your ideas. I do have a few questions to be sure I understand your list of possible tweaks:

a) When you said: " I'm usually a big fan of perimeter clean up, so I totally don't like this" are you saying you truly dislike the cleanup on the peninsula? I moved it here away from the exterior wall so a person cleaning up would not be back to back with a person prepping. Often I start dinner, and when DH gets back he unloads dishwasher and deals with the breakfast mess and dinner prep mess that has accumulated.

b) So sorry, but you lost me somewhere in the paragraph below. Is it possible you were referring to a sketch that did not load on the page?

"Lastly, two other thinks drawn about island design. Top is about what you have - roughly to scale - but showing the sink in a different location and assuming the dishwasher does move out. I also noted a small issue with seating. The space in the corner "belongs" to the seating on only one side. It's possible you intended the other cabinet to be smaller or something that didn't come through to my tiny mind"

c) I was also a bit lost here also: "The other think on the bottom of the drawing makes a bigger prep area on the one side of the cooktop by combining pot drawers with the top of the drawers for storing dishes. It moves cooking from being directly in front of the oven doors and makes dumping a pot of hot water not even a step away."

d) When you said birdie seating, do you mean having all the stools in a row? I hadn't heard that phrase before.(LOL).

Sorry to have to ask for more follow-up. I know your ideas will be good, I just got lost here and there. It might be me as it was a tough day on the construction site around here.

Thanks again, Bmorepanic for taking so much of your time to help today and in the past.

Carol

See - there was this picture that got seperated when I tried to clean up some of the english (lmao).

I LIKE have cleanup on the perimeter generally but I'm not sure about whether I'd be happier with clean up there or with the ovens there... Is that better?

It was nice to hear from you too!

It's much improved over the two island layout that you were considering. I'm among the crowd that says to get both DW's on the peninsula and the main plate storage on the island behind them.

For your ovens and windows, what if you moved the 2nd window down to where the first one is, and mulled it together to be a double. And then moved the ovens down next to the fridge. Maybe stack them in a single cabinet and get rid of the to the counter storage areas. Now the counter space is uninterrupted, and you have a long continuous section that can serve as a secondary prep spot in front of the windows, or as a baking area for stuff to go into the oven. I know you are a tall family, but you could also think about doing a small section at 32" for a pastry rolling spot next to the ovens if that's a frequent enough occurrence.

Edited to add image.

This post was edited by live_wire_oak on Tue, Jul 9, 13 at 21:18

Thanks bmorepanic! Those drawings are awesome. It is very helpful to have those sketches. Thanks for taking so much time to help me!!

Carol

Live_wire_oak,

I am lucky to have your help again too!! We all benefit on GW from your talent. I hope your showroom and kitchen business is going well.

Both DWs are moving to the peninsula (I might explore the 18 inch size DW for one or lengthening the peninsula). I like your idea of joining the windows. Greendesigns also liked the idea of bringing the windows closer together. I really appreciate you showing me in an image of what it would look like --- it would have taken my DH quite a while to do the equivalent on Corel Draw that he is using to draw up the elevation pics. Having the chance to stack the ovens would be great as well. The controls for the steam oven are on the bottom so higher is better, however I have to make some compromises.

Unfortunately, I don't think two windows can be joined together in this location due to structural reasons. The existing kitchen window, has an lvl beam over it as a header and four studs on each side of the window. The lvl beam is helping to support a steal beam which crosses perpendicular over the window for the floor above. I will double check with a framer who will be on our site tomorrow if it can be considered just in case I am mistaken.

I have always loved those down to the counter cabinets with glass. I actually thought (with very limited design eye) that having that glass cabinet flanked by two windows on each side would be beautiful (although the ovens below do take away from the beauty). I lean a bit towards traditional style. I had wondered about a stained glass door (probably with caming and different kinds of non coloured glass) for the doors. I definitely see the points raised by bmorepanic regarding the issue of four doors and accessing all areas, so this needs solving. Perhaps having the windows separated has the bonus of spreading the light more fully in this long room?

Thanks again live_wire_oak for taking time out to share your thoughts on my kitchen. I will check about what options if any I have for mulling the windows.

Carol

Back again,

If we do keep the down to counter glass door cabinet, what would be the other options I could do rather than four doors? Bmorepanic mentioned lift up and sliders. Would three doors be any better than four? What about those ones that swing open, but also slide inside the cabinet. Would two wide doors be worth considering? Does anyone have any input on these doors? I would love to hear your ideas.

I have not had time to speak to the framer about mulling the windows together as he is up on high scaffolds for the moment.

Carol

I don't know why when I posted the last question it did not bump the thread.

Carol