Where is the door to enter the room? Are those both windows in the diagram or is one a door? In any case you'll have less than 3ft of aisle, that's not enough. I think you need to stick with an L and just design it better.

I agree - 7' would be a really narrow galley kitchen. Any opportunity to steal space from another room?

Assuming that's 7'-1" and not 71", you do have room for a galley. Here's a link to a great galley kitchen that's only 81" wide.
Is the dining room door on the lower wall? Why do you want to enlarge the opening?

Here is a link that might be useful: Brooklyn Galley Kitchen

Here's a sketch to scale:

I was hoping I could take down the wall between dining room & kitchen, but I can't move that circuit box. Thought about cutting the wall at the edge of the circuit box, but there is a closet in the DR. The back of the closet is not flush with the corresponding kitchen wall. It would be too deep for a fridge alcove, at about 59" from wall to partition.

COrn,
Wait and save your money for now.
Save it for a completely new kitchen, with the DR and kitchen made into one big room.
You have to have the circut box moved, meaning you will need to pay for rewiring, which will be worth it.
Make the kitchen and DR all one nice big room, and it will increase the value of the property BIG TIME, and you will absolutely love it.
Just keep telling yourself, I'm saving for my new kitchen and DR, and you can do it.

How would you feel about a cooktop and separate oven?

There are a *couple* of cooktops that are relatively shallow:

A Fridigaire at 16 3/4" front-to-back, and a Summit at 13-3/4" front-to-back

You could do a shallow run of cabinets all along the cooktop side and put the oven in the other run, or a partly shallow run that bumps out a bit just for the oven, to gain a little floor space.

I wanted to link just the two cooktops I was talking about but couldn't. But they are both near the top in this link

Here is a link that might be useful: Shallow cooktops at AJ Madison

Wow, that Brooklyn galley is pretty dang awesome! Way to utilize every smidge of space!

Love that Brooklyn Galley!

That Brooklyn galley made me think it would be possible in my house. It is beautiful!

Re-locating the circuit box would also possibly include re-wiring my whole house to bring it up to code, which I'm not prepared to do. Spending a large amount of money on electrical in this house, valued around 120k, is not the best use of money for me, at this point in my life. I have a $15,000 budget for this and I don't want to price myself out of the neighborhood.

I thought about a small pass-through to open it up, or widening the entry way so it doesn't feel so cramped.

Thanks for all the notes!

We had a similar situation with a 7 foot wide galley. It can be done, not a perfect situation, you have to be willing to live with compromises.

Could you keep the dining room wall shallow at 18 inches deep for cabinetry for storage and counters and run your appliances along the outside wall? You would then have 42 inches of walkway and that would feel so much bigger. You would need custom cabs, but you could get pull outs and/or pantry storage.

Figuring a 24" fridge first next to patio door, then 23.5 inches of counters/cabs, then 33 inch sink cabinet (assuming that window is centered), then 47.5 inches left for a 23.5 counter and/cabs, then a 24 inch stove. You could fit a small dishwasher to the right or left of the sink if you wish.

You could open up the dining room doorway, but you would lose some of that narrow counter and cabs on that side. Lose the soffits to gain every bit of cabinet space.

We had to do a similar compromise with our 7 foot wide
galley. It helped so much to make the one side shallow.
Good luck.