I guess I'd do some pull out shelves behind doors in the knee hole, maybe an appliance garage for the phone and computer next to another set of doors w/shelves under your existing down to the counter.

What are the measurements of the area? Is taking out existing an option? Ordering a pantry to take up 3/4 of space by the ovens, with a little upper and drawer base next to it for the phone and keep office "stuff" in it?
If not maybe just the base cabinet with large deep drawers?
Maybe an appliance garage sitting ontop of counter up to existing upper for storage that is behind a "door"?
Lot's of options!
CJC

If you can take it all out have the cabinet maker get you another side panel to match the frig. It would be narrrower depth like the desk is. Then you can just get bifold doors, frosted glass or whatever... and create a pantry.

gilly

In order to achieve real function it appears you would have to take out the desk & uppers - then have floor to ceiling cabinet made - You could salvage the stone desk top & do a base bank of large drawers and have the upper be a hutch like that sits on the counter. Other than that I don't think you can retro fit what is existing - just will look odd & not provide you with the storage you are looking for.

The "pile of papers" oh, that will find a spot naturally

Good luck

I did not like drawers for food storage. Some here do but it didn't work for me. I prefer the pull out shelves or a shelf attached to the wall that isn't so deep you can't see the back of it. After the fact I bought an "antique" cabinet 12 inches deep by 72 inches tall by 44 inches wide. You would not believe how much stuff I can get in there! The bifold door idea would work, too. I was thinking the least disruption to your existing kitchen. And once you start tearing stuff out........well, it's just a slippery slope!

Gillylilly,

Since your house is so new does that mean you think you can get matching cabinetry pretty easily? If you can...

Right now you have that open storage on the uppers. If you were able to move the door on the left to cover the center storage instead so now you have the open cabinet on the left. Then you could pull out the open cabinet and the drawer set below them and put in a full height pantry with pullouts.

So you'd need to pay to move the door, take down/cut down that newly open upper, pull out the drawer base and cut the ctop down, and buy/install the pantry from the original cabinet people so it matches well.

Then you'd still have a small desk area for your computer and piles (I'm thinking 24"? but it's hard to tell from the photos, but an entire pantry of what? 12? 15? inches and all enclosed uppers for basically the cost of a single large cabinet and the labor for install and cutting the granite.

You'd end up with a left over drawer set (maybe you need to replace a regular cabinet with some drawers somewhere else?). The second phase here could be that if you didn't want the knee hole any more you could buy a second set of office drawers and put the two sets side by side under the desk drawer. That will give you an area that is probably a little higher than the rest of the kitchen but that's usually more comfortable if you are going to be standing in front of it looking at the laptop at all.

Just some guesses as to options since there are no measurements!

Here is a link that might be useful: Example Cabinet

Wow- thanks for all the suggestions.. My only concern is the hardwood floors were installed after cabinetry so I would have to figure out the uneven flooring but I am sure that could be easily solved.

A lot to consider...

The measurements of the space as is right now are 44 1/2" from the oven cabinet to the walkway and 23 3/4 from the wall to aisle.. 32" from floor to desk top.

Note to self: Listen to MOM when designing a kitchen and she suggests NOT to add a desk.. Oh well next time I suppose....

Can you give us the measurements of the individual cabinets? That way we can see if shuffling them around would work out.

If you give up your desk area, where will you put all that stuff that is there now? You have already said that you still need someplace for computer etc.

This is what I suggest: set up a message center where you want it to be, and keep the bare minimum that you think you will need. Is the new message area the current desk area or someplace else?

Then use the current closed uppers and desk drawers as temporary food storage and see if that helps your problem. You may realize that the location of the food storage in relation to your kitchen may not help your situation either. Or that not having a good desk area will impact your life significantly. You have to experiment and see...

Is there a laundry room close by that can have few shelves added?

It looks like you need recycling center from the picture I see. Where will that go? Is there a place for that?
You need to look at all your functions. Not just one area that does not seem to work so well.

I am not sure starting you tear kitchen apart in piece meal is the answer. Does everything else work really well?

Hi - here's a stand-up desk that you could maybe incorporate into a pantry above & below? Instead of drawers - use shelves & doors.

WOW-Thanks for all of the feedback.. For some reason I stopped getting email notifications with your posts. I am definitely going to clip all of your suggestions as my DH basically said there are too many other things that need to get done before demo'ing our brand new kitchen. I suppose he's right- In due time we will change the desk out-

to answer a few questions, we do have a recycling center on the opposite side of the kitchen. That mess was re-located from another spot. I'm a piler....

We have plenty of cabinet space in the kitchen- All the cab's go up to the 9' ceiling, but I just don't feel we have adequate food storage.. something I kind of discovered the day we moved in.. Oh well.. I'm sure I will be back once the other stuff on the to do list gets done! Thanks again for all your suggestions!!

To minimize cost and work with what's there-remove skinny drawer in knee space-insert 2 door cab with rolling trays inside. Unify this with existing drawers with some carpentry work and furniture toekick-not a big deal. I like the uppers-just leave them?? Maybe insert a shelf between counter area and bottom of uppers-can add corbels.