Sorry, I'm of absolutely no use in layouts, but just wanted to say I already have major mudroom envy! You are going to love having all that extra space in the kitchen, new mudroom and garage. I can't wait to see what the design experts suggest.

I'm not a layout guru, but a few things come to mind right off.

Do you want to keep the breakfast eating area AND have island seating? Or are you only planning on one casual eating space?

13' wide with cabinets on each of the long sides and an island will be a bit on the tight side, particularly if you are talking about wanting multiple people (kids) in the kitchen at the same time you are working. And uncomfortably tight if you want island seating

You can start to figure out how much room you need by figuring out cabinets (24" deep is standard, 1 1/2" countertop overhang = 25 1/2"). MINIMUM aisle width is 36". If you have multiple people in the kitchen, you definitely want wider. If you have seating at the island and want people to be able to walk between the seating and cabinet side, you need wider still. Most people suggest having 42" aisles as a minimum. So working backwards, you have 156" - 25 1/2" (cabinet run 1) - 25 1/2" (cabinet run 2)- 42" (aisle 1 between cabinet & island) - 42" (aisle 2 between cabinet & island). This leaves you with a total of 21" countertop size for an island (so the cabinetry would be 18"). If you won't have cabinets in the one area where the 10' addition is (closer to the breakfast area) or if you do a shallow pantry, you would be able to fit a narrow island.

How much flexibility do you have in moving the kitchen wall over more where the mudroom is starting? Also a potential concern I see right now is where the door from the mudroom is opening - that would tend to open directly to where I see your island sitting. I wonder if it would be advisable to move the closet area so that is is on the long wall and move the door up further toward where the closet was shown.

Plan this one from the inside out. It's possible that 10' would be too big for some options but not quite big enough for others. The random 10x14 may not be what you need.

you need a small door into garage from the outdoors:where would that be?... then,into the mudroom should be quite close to that. I'm thinking your back garage door would be centered on that back new wall, soI'd make the mudroom entrance at mid point along the wall[furthur "up"] from where it is. then into the kitchen,a little furthur"up' as well. do away with the swinging door between mudroom and kitchen. You get an improved site line from family room through dinette into kitchen by moving these entrances up those walls.there is nothing redeeming about the constant view of an entrance into a mudroom and through to a garage door from the living part of your home. Not sure I could say the long narrow kitchen you'll get would excite me too much. I'd spend more time with the carcass of the "new" perimeter you'll have and so what other kinds of imprints within the space you could achieve.

We once did a remodel where we bumped out a room, and one thing I wished I had considered more was the impact on the views outside from the adjoining room. While I do not know what the orientation of your view is to outside from your nook, it seems to me that you might be blocking your view significantly from your bay window in your eating nook with the new kitchen expansion. With that large of an extension (10 ft of wall), and so close to the nook window--especially a bay window, you might feel really closed-in when in your nook area. Also may block some of the the view from the family room.

Do you need to go out 10 feet with the garage/mudroom space because of the new master suite upstairs, or is the upstairs suite going just over the existing garage? If you do not need that space because of the upstairs expansion, could you possibly extend the garage less, and orient the mudroom the other direction?

Then instead of extending the kitchen so much, what if you expanded the kitchen and the nook, but by a lesser amount. Your drawing indicates 16' from the dining room wall to the existing nook exterior wall, if you made that distance 20 feet, (expanding both nook and kitchen 4 feet from the existing wall rather than 10 feet in the kitchen and zero in the nook) you would have enough room for and 8' x 4' island, oriented in the same direction as your peninsula currently is between nook and kitchen. Working out from the kitchen/mudroom wall, you would have 2' of cabinetry, then a 4' walkway then the island (4' wide), which would leave you about 13 feet in the nook area, so you could have 3' for island seating and still have the same amount of width in the nook for a table.

Keeping kitchen and nook window walls on the same plane and going out just 4' will create a more open-spacious feel, give you the gathering room you want, and a more funcitional shape to accomodate the island layout you want. I agree with herbflavor, that the long narrow kitchen space is not optimal. It will also save your view, and prevent you from feeling "tunnel vision" with a 10' wall right next to your nook window. Basically, if I am interpreting your drawings correctly, by adding just 4' to the existing nook and kitchen areas, you would have a total space about 20' x 23' which would give you a very nice space for an 8'x 4' island, with generous 4' walkways around the 3 sides, plus space for seating on the fourth side, plus a nice dining area that is open to the kitchen.

Just "eyeballing" it, it seems that your existing kitchen is protrudes maybe about 2' from the existing back wall of the garage, so if you expanded the garage about 6' to line up with a 4' extension on the kitchen, that looks to be about the width of the mudroom, and if you turned the mudroom 90 degrees so its length goes across the back of the garage, you could still have the same dimensions on the mudroom, without extending it so far toward the back of the house, and thereby blocking views.

Just my 2 cents--and all dependent on your not needing that 10' for your upstairs plans. Good luck!

What does "high level" mean?

I agree with pal 100%--start from the inside out and see what proportions the room needs to take. You're spending a lot of money for an addition that will not accommodate your dream island.

Speaking of money, in your area, does it make sense to do such a huge addition, or would you be better off moving?

Yes please do tell, I'm curious what is high level kitchen addition?

I wondered, too, but seeing she was from VA, I figured it was a security thing.....

Hi, I agree with starting by designing "inside out," i.e., the spaces you'd want the way you'd want them, then go to work integrating them with the physical limitations.

I'd also take a hard look at that very expensive unfinished garage space you have on your diagram. If that were all you were adding, would you pay that kind of money to be able being the Christmas ornaments down out of the rafters and store them there? How could that space be better used for living? Or even just be made more flexible so it can meet changing needs?

I agree that you need to plan inside out.

The little garage section next to the mudroom need a door to get the tools in and out to the back yard.

Do you use the DR? Is that a necessary part of your house. My SIL has a house in VA and they NEVER use their DR. It is a huge waste of space. Even when the family visits, we eat in the breakfast room similar to yours. They have made it into the homework room with DR furniture. To me that is bad planning and bad use of space. If you forsee that DR will be used as a study/homework room for kids, get proper furniture for it..... and plan accordingly.

You need to think of how you will use your entire house; not just the disfunctional kitchen. Be honest about your lifestyle and what YOU and your family need.

If it was my house, I would use the DR as a quiet room for the adults or a media room for the kids. There is basement so you may have a TV room in the basement for the kids. I would be happy enough using the breakfast room table for all of my table eating. That means that you need a space big enough for 8 to 12 people at the table...

If you will be using the DR as a daily or regularly used DR, then consider opening up the wall (a bit) between the kitchen and DR to give more access and ease of use.

Yeah, what VickyW said! I think that a long narrow kitchen would be a nightmare. If you bumped out the kitchen and breakfast area you could get a great island.

Thanks so much for all the input. My "high level" simply meant I didn't need to know exact size of cabinets, placement of appliances, yet... Vickyw, extending the back 4' across current kitchen and breakfast is an interesting idea. My problem is that I have a walkout basement below so the 10' extension would get me a new full room in the basement but I'm thinking a 4' extension would be on posts and lead to a darker basement (I've got another bay window and duplicate of current kitchen window in the basement directly under the main level). I have thought of putting a screened porch off the bay window between the addition and the current deck so that the blank wall of the addition would be inside the porch. I'm attaching a rough layout that a kitchen designer did for the space (not to scale!). If the cabinets for the island were 18" instead of 24", there would be 42" in between island and cabinets in the area that extends into the addition and 60" between the island and cabinets/wall at the other end of the leg after it turns. A few more answers, the door from the garage to the outside will be on the far side near the front because of the slope to the backyard. The new master above will use the entire area above the garage including the new 10' and there would even be a storage area under the new 10' section of the garage accessible from the backyard (we have way too much stuff). We currently use the dining room as a "kid office" and have desks along one wall, storage cubbies, and a rectangular dining table (used to be Pottery Barn kid-sized farm house table but they outgrew it). I thought about moving the wall between DinRm and kitchen 2' into the kitchen to make the dining room bigger but since that wall is the middle of the house, I'm thinking there are cement support posts in that wall holding up the second level. What does everyone think of this layout?

You can't start sticking in islands where ever you like without at the same time considering where appliances are going to go.

As others have mentioned,plan from the inside out and at the same time consider sun-light directions etc. We extended out as well and we had to do both the kitchen and DR together. If we didn't the DR sunlight would have been blocked by the expanded kitchen. If we went out 10' (which was the original plan) I would have wound up with a DR that measured 22' x 10', and it would have been great for a kitchen but I don't host state dinners. We settled for an expansion of 4 1/2' - I lost my oven wall but the rest of it functions really well. You need to consider everything. Yes I get the darker basement but why not address the lighting requirements for downstairs with new lights.

OMG! That is my house. I looked at the floor plan and thought it looked familiar, then saw it was the Monroe.We must either live in the same neighborhood or you live in the other one where these houses were built. Are you in BF or FG? I am in BF.We are down to 2 from 5 and just redid our kitchen but left the same footprint.

I think that the suggestion of adding 4 feet both to kitchen and eating area would do the job. When we built 27 years ago we had a choice of peninsula or island. I think with the extra 4 feet that could work nicely.Our eating area is a little larger as the hardwood is extended passed the bay window. We have a 72 inch oval pedestal table and sat as many as 12 around it.
I wish I had had a mudroom when the kids were here.
Good luck with your plan.

Denali, that's too funny. I'm in FG. There are a few neighborhoods in the area with the Monroe. Thanks to everyone who gave their input. I've got to let the ideas sink in before I make any decisions. And to answer the question of light, the morning sun comes in the back of the house on little bit of an angle from the Family Room end towards the kitchen so an addition on the kitchen end won't block the sun into other rooms.