Personally, I'd get a smaller fridge, or I'd shrink the window. Fudging it is what you have to do when you move into an old house and your fridge doesn't fit. With a new house you built, it should be done right from the outset.

I will probably shrink the window. Our initial layout had the fridge in another wall, when we changed, we were met with a concrete column in the way.

Since there is only 60 cm between the window edge and the column, we need to make that 80cm to fit the fridge enclosure.

This post was edited by luizborges on Sun, Aug 17, 14 at 11:50

Yes, shrink the window, or move it at least 20cm down the wall so that the fridge doesn't cover it (how far to move it depends on how it's framed--you don't want the fridge covering any part of the frame).

Or post your kitchen floorplan here and let people brainstorm tweaks to the layout--there may be a way to do your kitchen that doesn't involve changing the window.

But definitely do not have it covering the window. As SJHockeyFan said, doing something like that is NOT something you do when building a house from scratch; it's something you do, hopefully temporarily, when you move into a house where your existing fridge doesn't fit. Build it right (and design the kitchen layout right) in the first place so you don't have that problem.

Remember, also, your next fridge may be a slightly different size than the current one. Best to move or resize the window. Err on the side of caution!

Thinking kitykat, and planning or err to the side of caution we made quite a bit of change to the original design. It is now a G shape.

The two blue rectangles are columns (and the reason the fridge was covering the window). I tried to put all the relevant measures in feet (we use metric here). What do you think?

We thought about getting rid of the sink counter (making it a galley shape) and moving the sink to the same counter as the cooktop. The bad thing is it become a bit more cramped, the good thing is that I get rid of "countertop corners".

We also played with the idea of removing the auxiliary laundry closet, moving in the fridge and putting an island but my wife didnt like the island idea.

This post was edited by luizborges on Sun, Aug 17, 14 at 21:56

I'm no expert, but I think the first layout is awkward. It seems that you will have a kitchen/dining table below your kitchen. In the first layout, I don't like how one would have to walk around the fridge to get to that part of the room. It seems too closed off.
The second layout looks much better. If your wife doesn't like the island, you could still do this layout but with a peninsula instead. But, overall the fridge is better at the end of the range run. I wouldn't want to be taking up valuable kitchen space with a broom closet when you have a laundry room so close.

Just my 2 cents.
Also, if you want some of the pros to weigh in, maybe try re-posting with "layout help" in the title....?

I'd cut a fridge notch in the wall split between pantry and laundry. Relative to the square feet of kitchen space, each of these spaces is a space hog. Notch a corner from the laundry, and one from the pantry, and use that space for kitchen, for the fridge. Add counter where the fridge was, then think about moving the range down a tad, to get a better size work zone between sink and range.

The other thing that's awkward about the first layout is you have 4 stools lined up (will you actually eat your meals there?) and one of them looks at the side of the refrigerator and another is looking at the end of the upper cabinets (unless there are no uppers?).

beautybutdebtfree, I can't cut the wall there, there is a support column in there and the laundry is brick wall so I would have trouble to move it.

sjhockeyfan, the stools would be for chatting and maybe eating breakfast. I put four there, but we are in 3 in my family, also no upper cabinets.