I would put both dishwashers in the island. I don't think you will have room for everything you are considering for the pantry.

And are you sure you want the island 5 feet wide? That will make it very hard to clean the center.

I would consider stealing a bit of space from the dining room so that you can put in a wider fridge.

Sorry, don't have time to look at your plan, but had to ask... where are you? I'm in Halifax :)

I sure don't see room for all that in the pantry either.

My advice: Keep both dw's together. I split mine once, because it seemed to make so much sense, but just didn't work in practical day-to-day use.

That's a 2nd sink to the right of the stove, isn't it?

Where will your dishes be stored? I'd have the dw's by the sink that's closest to that.

Are you going to prep facing out to people and family activity or facing the window? If it were me, I'd want to prep on the island where I can see and visit, and keep the cleanup area under the windows, so dirty dishes aren't collecting on the island in the middle of everything.

Unfortunately, the pantry and fridge are at the same end of your kitchen as your dining area, and you can't have everything at one end. If this were my space, which it's not so feel free to ignore me, I'd put the clean up sink and 2 dw's under the left end windows, and store the dishes in the island. I'd move the prep sink toward the fridge, as there is no functional advantage to having it centered, and centered, it divides the work space and is far from the fridge and where you plan to put the ovens.

A big concern for me is that when you put the ovens in the pantry, you have very little pantry left for food...And you're trying to mix hot, cold, and food storage all in one enclosed space. Would you consider putting a single oven undercounter along the window wall somewhere?

This is what I meant, but I don't know that I would like the dishes so far from dining and so that someone would have to go through the entire work area to join food and dishes for a snack or whatever.

So here is my 2nd try. It still has zone-crossing issues, but hard to avoid when everything is stretched along the wall and the fridge is at one end. This would be made better if you would consider an undercounter fridge to hold cooking and baking ingredients.

It's all wishful thinking to have it all tucked away in the pantry, I know that - but it was worth a try. My ideal solution would be undercounter fridge/freezer combo in the pantry (Perlick has a perfect one) - budget may not allow it right now.

rhone - the sliding door opens where you placed the dishwashers in the first drawing so they would have to go to the other side of the cooktop. Then I would move the prep sink to the other end of the island - ok cause then there is room to put stuff from the fridge right on the island. Ideally the dishes are in the island as this is where we will eat most of the time - but they could be to the left of the oven because most people have to get their dishes and transport them a distance to either the table in the kitchen or the dining room area anyway. I don't see this as a hardship but then the dishwasher needs to be close by too. Maybe we need to have the sliding doors open from the other end? The reason we had them opening closer to the counter was to have a useable corner on the deck but traffic flow would be better the other way wouldn't it?

It helps to talk it out and have all your suggestions. Keep it coming please.

I hate today this - you already know from that - so skip on to the next comment and don't read the rest.

You're undertaking a very expensive addition and I see some really big issues:

1. Remember it'll be dark in the winter no matter what you do. Add lots of lighting also.

2. If you're building all those windows, shouldn't the chef be able to see out them in the summer?

3. You're building on dark space for pantry storage in the sun.

4. You're leaving a big, relatively dark, hole in the center of your house.

That's it really. I'd like to see you have something like dining and kitchen sharing the sun on the perimeter with storage in the core space. I'd like to face at least two sides of windows, the diners and the sitters, not an interior wall.

bmorepanic- sorry, I'm not really following you.
1) - looked after, I didn't post the lighting plan.
2) Why would the chef not be able to see outside?
3) ? This is the north side of the house if that helps.
4) If by "large dark hole in the center of the house" you mean the area behind the stools - this is just not true. There are windows everywhere, not only from the kitchen, but 3 from the dining room,(2) beside the fireplace and an 8' window behind the chairs in the sitting room. Pretty sure it won't be dark.

Having said that, feel free to have a go and redesign the space. I'm intrigued by your ideas. Keep in mind the wall between the dining room and pantry is an existing exterior load bearing wall.

willis13 - yes I am in Halifax! How are the house renos coming?

Cool! Hi!
Renos are coming... sloooowly.... We had some minor issues with our "glitchen" as I so fondly call it, which have put us about a month behind. But kitchen stuff should all should be done by the end of today, and then my contractor has about a day of clean up, installing undercabinet lights, etc. So, soon! Really looking forward to finally putting all the stuff away. And FINALLY getting some photos :).

I agree with bmorepanic. You're not taking advantage of the exterior walls that you are creating. Adding a 250K addition to the home and not putting in all the windows you say you want isn't a wise use of money.

Essentially, flip the kitchen.

Take that pantry and put it on the left in the center of the home where there isn't a chance for any windows and put the actual kitchen space against the outside wall where you can have windows. Maybe add a french door to it so that you can have a path to the hot tub area. Heck, have a window with a passthru to the hot tub area so that snacks are easily passed out there.

Snacks? Do margaritas qualify as snacks? :)

LWO said it better than I could.

In essence, I'm agreeing with you that windows on that side of the house don't let in a lot of light. And in the core house, the windows will move another 9 feet away from the wall dividing the front from the back of the house and it will be pretty dark back there.

Why build new pantry space in a corner that could have windows? Particularly when you could recycle the relatively dark space on the wall dividing the front from the back of the house into a new pantry. Then, you'll be building what you want - windows - in the very expensive new space. Maybe a skylight or something could mitigate it a bit, but I hesitate to suggest that because of snow loads. There's a lot about Canada that I don't know!

Chef faces blank wall with side views of windows that are pretty far away - inside of the previous dining room, by the side of the fireplace. Closer, the sliders will allow a side view of part of the deck and whatever else is out there. But, chef pretty much faces the old kitchen.

Maybe you were thinking of three dining areas? Formal/informal/counter or something... Just me, but I'd rather have one really comfy, bright one and with a stool or two.

I don't feel able to draw anything for you right now - partly because my own remodel is occupying my brain, partly cause I don't know enough about you, your family, how you cook, what the rest of the house is like and mostly because if I did, I haven't a clue about adding onto a house and am likely to make a bad plan.

OK, full disclosure, if I had the opportunity to have windows on three sides like you do in the addition, not only would the entire thing be glass, but most of them would be floor to ceiling.

Ok - I think I understand what you are saying. Put the pantry on the back wall right where you enter the kitchen (where the fridge and desk are currently). Where is the oven wall now? Then, would you leave the pantry space open as part of the kitchen? Or take the dining room wall, which is a load bearing exterior wall down? It would need some sort of post or column to support it I think..Anyone want to take a stab at drawing this??...

Ok bmore - sketch this baby out, nothing fancy, but I need some sort of visual in what you are saying 'cause I can't figure out the orientation of what you are talking about. Keep the basic footprint of the addition and work within those dimensions. The width of the dining room and sitting room is 13', the new part is 9'6. I know you are tired -- grab a glass of wine and relax!

I am still looking at everything, but one thing I would NOT want a view of all the time is the hot tub. I don't find looking at a large piece of padded, sunfaded Naugahyde particularly attractive. Here in the Northeast, where pools are used 1/4 of the year, the more savvy landscapers will dissuade you from putting something that is not attractive when out of use front and center. I can understand why you do not want windows in that particular location.

One thing that I see is an empty space below the island and between the LR and DR. That is a difficult space and in the current plan it is empty, and I can't really concieve what it would be other than a large transition space between LR, DR and Kitchen.

I agree with getting tha pantry into this core, so what if the whole kitchen somehow bisected this part of the house with a plan perpendicular to the axis it is now on, with pantry at the bottom and kitchen at the top. You may be able to get a smaller addition with more bang for your square footage, and tuck the hot tub into the corner more, get windows that let light into the DR (clerestory?) and right side of the kitchen, but still got the hot tub into a spot that was not conspicuous when covered.

palimpsest - I agree with you on this point. In every plan we have worked on , I have not wanted a window looking at the hot tub. At one point someone wanted to put it on the deck to the far left but I axed that pretty quick because then I would see it from every window! There is no other room for it in the backyard so my vote was to the far right and there are no windows in the pantry for that very reason. I could put in a window on the other wall that doesn't face the hot tub.

I actually love what you've planned. But I'm definitely biased because it's close to my personal ideal kitchen layout based on the way I cook. I'm just drooling over what you have there! Our current kitchen has a similar island layout but completely dysfunctional builder layout where the fridge and range locations are opposite of what you have on your new design. Brutal layout, and we're now in process of planning new side runs that will hopefully end up similar to yours above (though without all the great windows in your plan).

My main comments are:

1) Not sure if you'd even need the prep sink in your layout. Take this comment with a grain of salt however since I didn't see your original design or description of how you function in the kitchen. If you're a two-cook family or will have someone cleaning at the same time you are prepping, then yes it makes sense. But if you are the chief cook and bottle washer, then having the prep and cleanup area merged would be preferable in my opinion since you'd have that whole long run of island for prep with just a half-turn to the range. So if you're a one-cook kitchen I'd omit the prep sink altogether and use that cabinet space for dish storage (and you could put a small sink in the pantry for beverage/coffee center usage to keep family out of your path if you wanted). If you're a two-cook family I'd move the prep sink to the other side of the range, and you'll probably end up finding the island would be your primary prep area anyway with the "prep sink" used for overflow.

2) I'd keep the pantry where it is. No biggie losing ~5 feet of window that looks at an ugly hot tub and would only lighten a few feet in front of a load bearing dining room wall. You have close to 20 feet of window in your kitchen plan which I think will look stunning.

3) Perhaps consider shortening the pantry to the 4'2" x 9" area behind the fridge, if you were just going to end up filling it with some appliances anyhow. Then you have some potentially more interesting choices. You could put an extra wall oven/micro on the back wall just before the pantry would start (across from the side wall where you show the fridge now). Or you could do a double wall oven there, changing your planned range to a cooktop with pot drawers underneath and thus gaining more drawer space in the kitchen for dishes. Or you could do wall ovens where you currently show the fridge, and perhaps fit a larger 42" fridge on that back wall.

4) Do you know what counters you're getting yet? If quartz, then check the slab sizes and you might want to adjust your island plans accordingly to avoid seams. We wanted a huge island as well but we also wanted a particular caesarstone surface that came in a max slab size of 120 x 56 inches. So we adjusted our cabinets accordingly to make it a 9'9" length and 24"+12" depth plus pillars and seating area for a total finished island size of 10 x 4.5 feet, in order to get it in one seamless slab. So if you haven't already thought about it, you might want to check the slab sizes of whatever surface you're looking at and plan the island accordingly.

Good luck! I think your kitchen will be amazing!

I also agree that the transition space between living and dining room is large, but I'd hesitate to flip the kitchen and put a pantry in there personally. The current plan is nice and open, letting all that light from the dining room flow through the home. Closing the plan with pantry walls could affect the light and overall feel of the home.

It's hard to tell from just the picture above, not knowing what doors lead where where, but leaving it open may gives you the option of using that space as a breakfast area down the road, and then the dining room still be formal dining as opposed to casual breakfasting, or it could even be repurposed as a study or a sun room, etc. At least you'd have options down the road if you wanted them ...

taggie - thanks for the comments. I like the idea of shortening the pantry - funny just today I was wishing I had room for a double wall oven. Might just work. I would like to have a separate prep and clean up area - we both like to be in the kitchen together. I will move it to one end of the island or the other.

Yes , we are probably putting Caesarstone on the island and will adjust it accordingly. I don't want seams either. Good tip.

I really wanted to get additional freezer space up on this floor and out of the basement. Although putting the fridge on the back interior wall is too far away from the working kitchen what do you guys think of putting a freezer here? I would put panels on it so it would blend.

Oh, good. The conversation moved on. Now I don't have to feel guilty in addition to inadequate. laughing