A couple small ideas:

Get the refrigerator out of the corner. As it's situated, the door cannot open all the way.

Since you're looking to save money, definitely go with a range. This costs about 1/3 of the cost of a cooktop and ovens -- and it'll save you countertop space too (compared to the double ovens you have now).

I see you have a bread box eating up space on your countertop. I'd build in a bread drawer.

Since you have a large pantry, can you relocate some of your kitchen stuff there? For example, that steamer that's taking up a great deal of shelf space.

Yes, not buying both an oven and a coooktop is part my motivation for getting a range, that and I'm fine with it anyway. Definitely want to get the fridge out of the corner, its current location is really the driving force behind wanting to change the floorplan. If not for that I'd be tempted to leave everything where it is and just do updates.

I forgot to add it's a slab house, so part of my reluctance about moving plumbing is because the slab will have to be broken. We might end up doing that if some plan that requires it gets us really inspired but it's tough enough keeping these slabs in one piece on this expansive clay as it, I'm not dying to start chopping holes in it.

Thanks!

Hi, Lucas Tx. That looks like a nice space you have to work with. My own kitchen needs are pretty much like yours.

If it were mine my top priority, as always, would be simply to create a very good main place to work, a place I liked to be, with everything else placed to serve that spot efficiently.

Your statement that "prep space between the sink and cooktop is small, I end up prepping on the other side of the sink" says something very important to me. Your prep space was never meant to be that little scrap between those two, it's that BIG area between the stove and fridge that you don't mention at all and don't like to work at.

No matter what you do to the rest, if you don't move the sink you will always have a dysfunctional kitchen and be carrying stuff back and forth across the sink to where you want to work, as you do now.

Therefore, if it were mine :), I'd open up the diagonal wall, decide where I really wanted to do my prep and cooking and then place everything else where it needed to be.

Without much musing, I'm imagining the DW next to a widened doorway in (we could stroll right past with the DW door open), and the sink next to it looking out to the back yard; the DW side would be the cleaning side (where mess is gathered for cleanup) and the left the prep side (where freshly rinsed veggies were set for chopping, etc.)

The stove would need to be slid somewhat farther left on the wall it's currently on, incidentally adding some more nice work space, but especially to avoid a competing-bottoms problem between the diagonal prep counter and the sink.

This would create a pleasant and spacious main prep counter optimally between stove and water. The other cook could prep between stove and refrigerator.

The rest is details. I'd do almost all drawers, though. I have them and love them. If I bought another old house, much as I love old kitchens, I'd eat beans and rice until I could afford to upgrade to drawers. Everything is so easy to put away and find, and there's so much more effective storage area (you don't have to leave search room for the questing arm and moving stuff around to get at the rest).

Summary--plan on moving the sink. :)

Thanks Rosie, great response.

I'm puzzled though when you say the intended prep area was between the stove and the fridge, I guess you mean to the left of the stove as you face it? Or do you mean to the right of the sink, over the DW?

In either event, you're right, the only logical place is between the sink and stove with entails moving the sink to the right, stove to the left, or both.

Can you elaborate on moving the stove to avoid a competing bottoms problem? What would be competing?

Does putting the refrig in the middle of the back wall with storage on either side make sense if the oven vacates that spot?

Thanks!

Also wondering...where to put the microwave?

As the obvious originally intended prep area, I did mean that stretch of counter to the left of the stove as you face it. It's large and has the stove and fridge right there. Of course, almost everyone would prefer to work at the open counter, which you do.

Competing bottoms: If you imagine yourself working busily away at the diagonal counter and DH standing at a sink placed roughly where the DW currently is, or only slightly farther away... Of course, you guys have been working together there for a long time and will know if this is or would be an actual problem.

Yeah, the left of the stove doesn't really make sense from the functional standpoint but I guess that was their intention. That is my landing zone for the oven and the microwave, but for prep, I'd have to drag stuff from the sink all the way across the stove to get there.

As for DH getting in the way, not a problem. He cleans, but only after we eat, not while I cook.