If you post a reply to your own question, you can post another photo on the reply.

I'm having some trouble getting oriented so I'm assuming others are also. If you could doodle where you want the kitchen.

this is the kitchen from the doorway closest to the living room, the one we would like to keep

this is a view to the left towards the dinette we want to make part of the kitchen

this is view from dinette to kitchen with tiny pass thru that is the living room

other wall in dinette this is the window that will be sliding door that will take us to the deck

dinette to dining room, i think this wall should come out the door to the right leads to the basement

this is the hall that goes from dining room to living room past front doors on your left the kitchen is to the left so that wall has to stay and on the left is the coat closet that can go witch in the kitchen is behind the fake brick

It took a lot of flipping back and forth between photos and existing lay-out for me to reconcile the photos with your drawing (didn't help that the lines appear so faintly for me) but I think I got it.

Is this what you are working with?

I added a few dimensions you didn't supply (the left wall going to the DR) but I need you to supply the width of the hall wall (see "Span?"). I can not just add the closet and oven dimensions because the angled wall increase that span

I also made all the lines darker and rewrote all the dimensions so that your baseline plan is more legible. Lastly, I marked your proposed changes with bold boxes on the plan.

Are the new doors already ordered? I hope not because I actually think your kitchen would lay out better with patio doors where the kitchen window is and the kitchen moved to the dinette space.

We also need to know more about you. How many live in this home? Kids? Ages? Who's the primary cook? How many cooks? Do you or anyone else bake? Do you entertain? Formally or informally? Etc, etc, etc. See the thread below to see what we need to know to help you come up with a plan.

It would also be helpful to see a first floor lay-out. It doesn't have to be to scale but it would be useful to see the path taken to bring groceries in from the garage and how the kitchen connects to the rest of the downstairs.

What do you store in the closet in the dinette?

Do you have deck access from the LR?

Here is a link that might be useful: New To Kitchens? Posting Pics? Read Me!

While we wait for you to respond, here's a possibility if you can move the kitchen to the dinette area:

I eliminated the kitchen door to the hallway, placing the hall closet here. This will make your entry area feel larger and brighter, especially since your deck and back yard will now be visible from the front door, thanks to the placement of the new 66" wide French doors on the existing sink wall.

I eliminated the pass-thru to the LR in favor of a new entry to the LR, giving easy access to the deck. The doors will open up against the LR wall and the side of the fridge cab.

I pulled the DW and sink cabs out from the wall so that the counter edge is even with the fridge box (looks like you have standard depth, not counter depth) so that the fridge appears more built-in. You'll appreciate the extra depth behind the sink. Oops, I realized that I forgot to note that I planned for a 1" cab side between DW and fridge (something has to support the counter). There's room to increase that to 2.5".

I reduced the window opening to allow for the fridge cab box and 12"-14" deep upper cabs on the range wall.

I eliminated the closet in the corner. Hopefully you can access this storage from another room.

I voided the base corner storage in favor of drawers on the range wall. You likely won't miss the storage and it will save you some $$ (corner cab solutions don't come cheaply).

The island is a concept drawing since there were many dimensions I don't have nor could I guess at, given the angled space.

There are more costs because you're moving plumbing, venting, etc. However, this puts the kitchen closest to the DR and gives your home a good traffic flow between the areas.

I'll play with a couple more ideas later. One would leave the kitchen where it is. The 2nd idea moves the kitchen to the dinette but with new French doors where the existing dinette window is.

Well, this was tough!

Here is a suggestion:

I hope you have not had your french doors installed yet because they are quite difficult to design around. They are actually best suited to having a little table in front of them, which is what you are trying to get away from by incorporating the kitchenette into the kitchen.

So instead, I made your existing sink window your door to the deck (it should be wide enough to be a door already, so the switch should be very easy.

The former larger window in the kitchenette has been shortened to an above-counter height, and I think you will really enjoy having a view both while doing dishes and while prepping between the sink and stove. It's always nice to have your biggest window right in the thick of things rather than off to the side where you won't enjoy it as much.

The wall to the dining can be removed or just given a wider doorway or whatever you like.

Wow both such wonderful plans. We have a sunroom off the living room that gives access to the deck but in the corner by the pass thru is a large corner fireplace so a doorway wouldn't work there. My husband is doing the work himself and we really didn't want to have to put in any new headers, that is why we ordered the patio door in special size to fit the exact opening of the current window. So unfortunately yes the door is already paid for and should be here next week. The wall oven and backside of coat closet is 84"
It just me and my husband and 2 big dogs, we don't entertain very often. I don't need a double oven. Our point of entry is thru the door in the dinette that goes to the basement and the garage. This is the room we go in out of all the time in the basement we have a place to leave our coats and shoes.
You guys are awesome those plans were great. Our kitchen is not an easy one.

Wow, Lisa, I was working on mine on and off all morning and posted it without refreshing the window, so I never saw yours. Interesting how similar they ended up being!

Duplicate

This post was edited by Jillius on Sat, Nov 8, 14 at 21:15

FYI the slider will open on the left side

This is the view from living room to kitchen, pass thru is under tv hallway to the left

Here is another:

I moved the hall doorway down to consolidate all the various doorways (except the new french doors), requiring only one short walkway to serve all of them. This allowed a longer continuous stretch of kitchen stuff (the L-shape).

When you replace the current sink window, you can keep the same header, but shorten the cripple studs below the window to make the window bigger and let more light in.

When you are doing dishes or prepping on the island, you will have a nice view out the French doors.

We also had an odd shaped kitchen. We took down walls, planned the kitchen and an island. I did not think about the floor when we planned it. Make sure you have someone that knows what they are doing on the flooring or get some really good advise. For us if we were facing one way in the kitchen the floor and island would look straight but if facing the other way it looked like it was not straight. We made the mistake of using the wood look tile which looks nice but was very difficult to figure out because of the odd shape of where the rooms met. I don't want what happened to us happen to you. We did finally get the floor figured out. If you draw the floor out on your lay out including your next rooms you will see. I like the island in the post above.

Jillius this is wonderful this is more what I was thinking, we still want to keep the kitchen doorway to the hall where it is now and the fridge in that corner (it's so big and is 36" deep) it will seem less obtrusive I think in the corner. I would like to move the stove into the area where you have the fridge and the pantry and the other doorway, and have it flanked by two cabinets, so I can have a easy access to the island as well as being closer to the sink for water and draining pots. Maybe shorten the island a foot or foot and half so I could put a bank of wall cabinets between the basement door and the closet door. I think Lisa had that on the hall closet wall in her plan I loved that idea. And love your idea of the sink facing out the doors that's great. We are now thinking about doing a full length picture window when we replace the one that is above the current sink, we never thought of not having a counter there lol.

Jess, I can definitely see how that could happen. In the dinning room we refinished the original parquet floors and in the hallway/ foyer we will the same flooring that the kitchen gets. We are thinking slate, or something similar.

You should check how you would run HVAC for the vent hood to the far wall where I put the fridge. That is why I had the stove where I put it - for ease of venting.

Depending on the way your joists run, you may not even be able to run it all the way over there. And even if you can, it may be such a long run or taken so many turns that your hood won't work very well.

Also, a fridge is an impermanent feature of a kitchen - appliances die and get replaced periodically. How old is this one? If you think you might relatively soon in the future consider getting a counter-depth fridge (which would work well for just the two of you -- a full-depth 36" fridge is designed for a family of four), consider if you will always want the fridge in that corner you have in mind. I can see how it would make the fridge seem less bulky, but the doorway will be blocked every time someone uses the fridge, and constricting the fridge placement to that corner may force you to put other things in less-ideal spots.

In particular, if you make all the changes you just described, I think you will end up with not very much good counter space. Your longest stretch would be next to the fridge, which is not typically where people find a lot of counter very useful, and that stretch will be basically all located too close to the windows to be handy to the stove and sink work zones. You would have only two feet of counter on either side of the stove (or one and three feet), and maybe three feet next to the sink that you would be using all the time.

You seem to have a very good idea of what you would like to do. I would suggest mocking it up on paper and in the space to get a better idea of how well it would work.

Sandy, I think this is something like you described in your post of Nov 9, 14 at 12:38. I share Jillius's concern about venting though.

It's a ranch so we will vent straight up thru the roof, we have to remove the ceiling in both kitchen and dinette because the kitchen side is 6 inches lower. So far we are split between the last two plans we like several features of both lol. You guys are great! Like Jillius island shape and senas bank of wall cabinets and placement of sink and dishwasher. We are going to do a range. Instead of wall oven and cooktop. My husband likes where Jillius moved the door to the hall however. We so appreciate everyone's help!

It's a ranch so we will vent straight up thru the roof, we have to remove the ceiling in both kitchen and dinette because the kitchen side is 6 inches lower. So far we are split between the last two plans we like several features of both lol. You guys are great! Like Jillius island shape and senas bank of wall cabinets and placement of sink and dishwasher. We are going to do a range. Instead of wall oven and cooktop. My husband likes where Jillius moved the door to the hall however. We so appreciate everyone's help!

If you're considering moving the door and a range instead of a cooktop and wall oven, then maybe you can do this:

I tried to imitate jillius's island, but I'm not sure how big the island can be. I moved the DW to the left of sink so it wouldn't be in your prep area and DW and oven doors can easily open at the same time.

I like that the best of all the options. That is also where I would have put the stove if I hadn't been worried about venting. Still gives you nice big swatches of counter space.

Deck access has to stay where it is, got it. FYI for future projects, you can always make an opening smaller without replacing a header. You wouldn't have needed to order a custom sized door (unless you were trying not to deal with siding).

So here's my idea based on the doors and windows staying in place with 2 people at home and 2 big dogs.

My measurements are counter to counter, counter to fridge door (assumed 33" depth for box and doors), and counter to wall.

I included a smallish coat closet by the front door. I realize that you keep most shoes and coats downstairs in the basement since you come in that way from the garage but a small coat closet upstairs would be useful for company or for other storage. Your husband will need to add a small header for this closet (I suspect this wall may not be load bearing but you'll still need a header).

If you really don't need a coat closet in the front hall, add more pantry storage in its place with the fridge centered between the cabs, creating a "wall of tall" with loads of storage. If you do this, you may be able to get away without uppers on your range wall.

I kept the existing doorway (but eliminated the door) so that if you're in the LR, you don't have to walk all the way down the hall, into the DR and then into the kitchen to get a beverage or snack. I'd find that a PITA.

Keeping that opening also brings light into your front entry. It looks to be fairly dark with minimal views through to the back so keeping a doorway here would alleviate a tunnel feel for the space.If you can add skylights or windows into the front hallway, even better.

Lastly, keeping that opening gives you 2 ways to get to the deck from the front hallway/entry. That's a plus when you have 2 big dogs who, I'm sure, have a habit of getting underfoot. ;-)

I placed a 12" pull-out pantry cab between back of hall closet and fridge, pulled forward to be even with the fridge box. In the future, if you decide to opt for a counter depth fridge, you can always set this cab back against the wall. This cab between fridge and closet will allow room to open the fridge doors wide enough to pull out fridge drawers. I wouldn't go narrower than that and I might actually increase it to 15" since fridge specs do change.

To give you more counter and storage space (despite its odd shape, it is a large space), I moved the clean-up sink and DW from the island to the far wall and added a prep sink to the island. This gives you a very good work triangle between fridge, pantry, prep sink and range with room to work at the island and on each side of the range. Oops, I meant to add a MW drawer to the island at the fridge end.

I intentionally placed the prep sink at the right end so that you can use the left end of the island for a fridge and pantry landing zone. It will be a good place to set down bags of groceries.

The island is inset from the range counter by 2" (my drawing makes it look like more than that). I had to guesstimate on the length of the island. I hope it's not less than 60" and hopefully it can be a bit longer.

The distance between island and exterior wall is actually 35.7 (I rounded up). I wouldn't make this any narrower so that you can easily get from deck to fridge through this area (assuming you have a grill on the deck outside the kitchen).

You didn't specify that you wanted island seating but you should be able to put 2 stools at this island. Mark it out on the floor with blue tape to see how it will lay out. I did the minimum recommended aisle of 44" behind one stool but I increased it to 50" between island and clean-up sink so it won't feel crowded when cab drawers are open.

I added glass uppers on each side of the sink to create a lighter feel in the clean-up area. I don't know what kind of style you prefer but the glass can be clear, seeded, frosted, ribbed.... there are many options.

Here are a few images of clean-up sinks against walls, not under windows, to inspire you:

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[Traditional Kitchen[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/traditional-kitchen-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_709~s_2107) by Novato Kitchen & Bath Designers Julie Williams Design

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[Industrial Kitchen[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/industrial-kitchen-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_709~s_2113) by Fairfax Station Design-Build Firms Kingston Design Remodeling

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[Farmhouse Kitchen[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/farmhouse-kitchen-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_709~s_2114) by Kent Kitchen & Bath Designers Trish Namm, Allied ASID - Kent Kitchen Works

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[Traditional Kitchen[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/traditional-kitchen-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_709~s_2107) by Boston Kitchen & Bath Designers Dalia Kitchen Design

Well you all have provided us with a lot of very good options and ideas. It has been extremely helpful. We are going to try and live without that doorway closest to the living room and see if that is a feasible option for us first. If we can't then we will keep the full sink in the island and go as big as we can with the top is it makes up for the loss of counter space if we keep that doorway. We would then keep just wall cabinets on that wall for extra storage maybe open up two separate bottom sections for dog feeding stations and include a counter for the area to plug in the cell phones and tablets, put the mail ect. I think we have decided to make the short window that is over the current sink a full length picture window. We could have gone with a standard size sliding door but one of the reasons we purchased this house was that all the main rooms have these huge windows in them and I wasn't willing to give up that size and view lol. Sometimes stubborn costs you.