Food for thought about the island - 23"-24" of table space per person is generally considered the minimum. 30" is much more comfortable.

I like your idea about moving the refrigerator to where the dbl ovens are drawn - that was the very first thing that hit me when I looked at the drawing. Have you thought about just swapping spots? It's VERY nice to have double ovens!

If you want a sliding door in the kitchen, and since you want more seating space at the island - simply adding another three feet of width to the kitchen could accomplish both goals - room for the slider and room between the island and the pantry cabinets.

Thanks for chiming in, dseng! We did think about the double ovens, but realistically I don't think we'd get enough use out of it for the added cost and space it takes up. While we're adding a lot more space than we currently have, looking at the layout makes me realize that we still need to be really efficient to make sure we get enough cabinet space for everything. We were thinking of doing a hood, but will likely do the micro above the stove to save on space. If only there was room and budget for everything! Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I appreciate it!

We had a similar expansion plan and paid an architect $10 k in fees, When it was put out for competitive bidding the bids were all over $100k excluding kitchen cabinets and appliances-with mid level finishes. I've been sitting on it for two years and am probably not proceeding. Just a warning, this will probably cost you $140k with mid level kitchen innards. I live in the mid-Atlantic. If you already know this, go for it!

scrappy25 - thanks for sharing your experience. We're in the design phase now with a designer so we'll have construction docs to put out for bidding. I am REALLY curious as to what the bids will come in at... and to be honest am hoping they will not be as high as your quotes! We're in New England. I think we're in the same position -- we need to see how much this will cost and depending where it comes in, we'll either move forward, or consider just replacing the kitchen.

The island will not seat 4 as currently shown. An island can never seat two people at a corner. All them legs from island, stools and people on two side can't fit under the counter. You can start to see it in the drawing with the stools actually overlapping the island legs and it gets worse with people - legs and knees for the two around-the-corner diners can't overlap under the counter.

The corner of the table, the desk and the island is pretty tight. The small ?shelves? look less than two feet away from the corner of the table. I'm not sure anyone will be able to get through when the table is actually occupied.

The desk will need a chair and I wonder if it will cause a big snafu with the table chairs and the island stools.

I believe some of the assumed sizes of appliances may be off in the drawing. The sink looks like a 24", the ovens look like 27", the range and ref look like about 30". It's always hard to tell but that's what they look like using one of the marked 36" cabinets as a ruler.

The one foot deep cabinets will make seating on the far side of the island an issue. Roughly, seating with a walkway takes a minimum of 44" from the counter edge to a BLANK WALL. It looks like you may not quite have that much to the cabinets - a lot of the time, a cabinet plan actually shows the size of cabinets without the doors on and certainly without handles.

When you have cabinets behind stools, it's nice to be able to use them. Generally you need to leave at least 54" but with a pair of 18" doors to open, I'd consider leaving 60" because its a main walkway to the outside and will be in the route to the drinks.

Combining a pantry and laundry might not be a great idea. The requirements for the two tasks are different. Pantries should be dark, laundry needs a lotta light. Laundries tend to be overheated, and overly humid. Pantries like cool and dry. Add in that laundries produce a fair amount of dust and possibly perfumes - cheerios that smell like Tide?

The spacing issues and circulation need some thought. People will want to use that corner between the living room, table and desk for circulation go to/from the kitchen. People will use the walkway from the front door to the back door -or- around the top or bottom of the island if you don't have any other way to reach the back deck.

Maybe think of changing the use of the spaces? Living becomes dining, family becomes kitchen, kitchen becomes family.

I would tell them to go fish and try again. just bad wit If the kitchen is the heart of the home, that island is a clogged artery.

I only have a minute right now but want to share that your island seating is to tight right now. My 9 ft island has 5 feet dedicated to the eating area. If you look at a typical kitchen table it is 5 ft x 3 ft. That is what we had before remodel and with 2 teen sons I knew it would not be comfortable with less than that. We can pull up more stools for game playing but for dining 5 can eat in comfort. 4 ft is a great width thou.

Do you have a floor plan with all the measurements labeled? The pics you posted only have a few of the needed measurements for us to be able to (1) give advice on clearances (although they do look tight) or (2) come up w/alternate layouts for you.

Don't be discouraged, this phase takes time...the more time you spend now in the planning stage, the happier you will be with the outcome, the fewer change orders (i.e., higher costs) you will incur, and the fewer things you may be forced to live with b/c it's too late to change things.

BTW...I'm not sure you have room to put your refrigerator and range on that wall...I need measurements & all appliance sizes to know for certain.

I recommend moving the DW to the other side of this sink...get it out of the main Prep Zone (the counterspace b/w the sink and range...you only have the one water source, so your primary Prep Zone will end up b/w the range & sink...not the island.)

Seating for 5: Your island will need to be at least 8' wide/long x 41.5" deep. You have the width/length, just be sure to keep it at least 41.5" deep if you remove the cabinets....although, with the range and refrigerator or ovens on that same aisle, you probably will not have a wide enough aisle for seating on that aisle...I recommend 60" b/c of the appliances + seating + two primary work zones (Prep & Cooking Zones) all crammed into that aisle.

Instead, do what cjc123 did. Remove the 12" deep cabinets on the right, remove all the cabinets from the bottom of the island so you have at least 60", preferably 63", clear space (that's 60" to 63" after you count the cabinets + decorative door/end panels). Then, as cjc123 has...two seats on the left, two on the right, one in the end.

Thanks to everyone who has commented so far! I'm finding this to be very helpful, and I'm really glad I posted here.

bmorepanic -- thanks for confirming about the seating... I was thinking the same thing about knees hitting. Thanks for the guidelines on the spacing, I know there's a lot more to work out with this to get it the way we want. As for the pantry, maybe that's the wrong word for it -- we're thinking the storage in the room with laundry would be for paper towels, toilet paper, canned goods, bottled water, etc. I was hoping all of our food would fit in the 12" deep tall cabinets.

cjc123 -- thank you so much for posting your island!! I want this space to be comfortable, and we were questioning the table space for the number of chairs we wanted to fit. I'm going to check out your before/after pictures more closely when I'm home tonight!

buehl -- we don't seem to have a plan with all measurements labeled, which we'll be asking for when we meet with the designer this weekend. Thanks for all of your suggestions, I'm going to pour over them tonight to figure out our options. I'm hoping it won't be a big deal to go out a few feet back or to the left on the expansion part so we can get in everything we really want. I'd prefer not to get rid of the 12" deep cabinets, so I'm hoping there is a way!

Thanks everyone! I know what I'll be focusing on tonight!

We're meeting with our designer tomorrow, wish us luck!

I think we've made some decisions on what we really want and what we can cut to make room for our must haves.

1. I really want to incorporate space for a 4x9 island to get the seating for 5. Hopefully it won't be an issue to go out the needed feet on the expansion to accommodate the cushion space we need for navigating around the island comfortably.
2. In the shelves/desk area in the kitchen, I think we'll go with just shelves/drawers, maybe with a landing space to put our mail and laptops. I don't think we'd actually spend time sitting at the desk in there, we'd probably just be at the island. And that would resolve the traffic issue in that corner.

I'm going to ask for the next round to show all measurements so we can really mock things up at home and make sure the space is good for us.

Spending time tonight on the cabinet/drawer needs... we haven't gotten to the nitty gritty on that, and I'm concerned that with that corner, there will be very little useful cabinets.

So if anyone has ANY thoughts on how to make a corner more efficient, please share!!!!