I am fine with you having an island, but it should be shorter. At quick glance, it looks like it dominates the room. You could also use shallower wall cabs (15" as opposed to 24" deep) as your island cabs and therefore have a less deep countertop in order to preserve walkway space. There is no rule saying one must have it be full base cab depth.
You can try the IKEA kitchen planner to see how it would look basically, and that lets you see it also in 3D and tilt and spin the design so that you see it from different angles. Since you are doing it for a rough draft of sorts, it should not be too hard. Just be warned that there are some glitches, but those were not in the areas that would affect making a rough plan.
Hope that helps.

You are right that 14' puts you just on the line between too tight with an island and too wide without. Your figures are correct, but you should figure in counter overhangs to get the true aisle clearance, which would be more like 39" if you had 2 ft cabinet runs on each wall and a 3 ft island in the center. However, with a standard depth fridge you will have even less aisle space, as they can be up to 32-34" deep...leaving you with equal aisles of 34", or one at 39" and one at 29"....Which would not be good in between the fridge and the island.

Could you inset the fridge into the wall at all?

Another problem with your plan is that the island creates a barrier between the sink and fridge, and whatever else is on the fridge wall. Think of making a meal where you often retrieve things from the fridge, take them to the sink to wash, prep them, and take to the stove. You'll be doing a lot of laps around the end of the island. --If you could move the fridge toward the stove, and shave the island back a bit so you have a straighter path between fridge and sink, it would help. Also a prep sink in the island could help. But you have to make sure you have workable aisles first, and the fridge depth is a big issue. You may have to decide between a full-depth fridge and the island.

That program you're using to make the drawing is probably OK, but let the grid lines work for you....make each box a foot so we can get an idea of scale/space/distance from glancing at the drawing.

Whether you choose to pursue an island plan is up to you and the room.

Roughly, a 24" cabinet has a top. There are some very modern styles that don't have counter overhangs, but those are very few. An overhang is around 1.5". So its better to think of the counter as 26". The little bit extra is because all cabinets aren't made to the same depth and you can pick anything you want later.

Something like the island has either two cabinet sides or a cabinet and an extra seating overhang. Where both sides have cabinets, both sides have counter overhangs. So, allow 39" to 42" for the island top. Where one side is seating, it needs a 15" overhang added to 26" or is 41".

A normal depth refrigerator is close to 36" with doors and handles. A counter depth ref is close to 30". A premium counter depth ref is actually 24" deep".

You don't have enough space to have seating on one side of the island with cabinets on both sides. Generally speaking, in order to have island seating and be able to walk behind it, you need about 44". BUT that's 44" to a wall, not cabinets or the ref. When you add those, you need to be able to open the doors/drawers, too - so that particular aisle, seating with a work area behind it needs five feet.

So 14 feet is 168 inches. First take away the two outer walls of cabinets at 26" and you have 116" left. Take away two 42" aisles and you have 32" left for an island width - one run of 24" base cabinets plus some backing. So the meta answer is yes, you can have an island if you shop for as narrow a depth refrigerator as you feel comfortable with.

This uses the minimum suggested aisle width for a single person kitchen. For a kitchen where multiple people cook, 48" is the suggested width.

And no, you can't cheat yet by planning on 40" aisles. Once the walls are built, you can think about cheating. Cause you're already cheating with the ref in one and many odd things happen in construction. You can always have a slightly deeper island overhang or build out those cabinets beside the ref so the counter there is slightly deeper if you end up with a coupla spare inches. But if the build takes an inch or two away, you don't want to hit the jackpot.

There's two other things for you to know about.

Where the cabinets stretch from one wall to another, you must include a filler. This is an allowance for the walls/floors never really being straight or plumb and the corners not square. It also covers you if the construction is just a little bit off.

Some people look at plans with narrow depth cabinets on one side to get the aisles and island depth they'd rather have. That's hard without putting something on the island.

Try really hard to place the ref where there is a straight path between the main sink and the ref. Constantly walking around to the island to get milk or walking around it to get a cereal bowl gets old quick.

Look at the door-door corner and see if those could be...

Thank you, dinalo, rhome, and bmorepanic for your thoughts and ideas.

It seems like everyone is in agreement that the island should be shortened and/or fridge moved.

Your suggestions were extremely helpful and I think we are getting a little more comfortable with the island.

In the attached I shrank the island a little, shifted the doorway to the dining room to the left a foot and flipped the door (we might see if we can do pocket doors here). This allowed enough room to bring the ovens to the wall with the range and to slide down the fridge; and since the double ovens are gone it can go to 48" which would be better if we were doing a more narrow depth fridge. In addition the fridge will interfere less with the island (although it still is an issue), and the path to the main sink will be clearer. I'm a little worried it is crowed around the range in the corner there, but there is a fairly long run between the range and the sink. I know it would work better as a 30" rangetop, but the one thing that is really a wish is to get a 36" rangetop.

To all of your points, I'm not sure how we were planning on using the island for storage. I suppose it is only deep enough for cabinets on one side and panelling on the other. We will have to think about a prep sink, we are still in the early stages of planning now. Just seeing if we can work with the space (as getting a bigger space than this would be costly but doable).

To brohm's point it would be great if we could sink the fridge into the wall, we maybe be able to get a very little bit this way but the other side is a hallway with a blank wall so we can't really have a bump out in this wall (and it is an existing wall we weren't planning on moving as that would have a lot of impact on the rest of the house).

To bmorepanic's point I should have been clear but we aren't planning on sitting along the long ends of the island, we were more planning on putting two small chairs/stools at the far end of the island where it opens to the seating area/family room.

I'll play around with the Ikea planner a bit to see how it works.

It is mostly a one person kitchen, but sometimes two. I think by implementing all of your solutions (and perhaps narrowing the island a few inches) we can make the space work.

Thank you.

Can the window be moved/changed?

Yes the window can be moved/changed. Its current location is actually different than in the drawings I posted. Currently it is closer to the dining room.

Is this layout to scale? The island still looks a little wide to me. It is wider than your base cabs are deep. It is a move in the right direction though.....

So how about windows flanking the stove and the fridge on that wall, too? (Sink on wall where stove is now) The island could end enough before the fridge starts so it doesn't cause too much aisle problem...

Was thinking more like this for the doors...
{{!gwi}}

Seating for 2 on the end is only possible if the island is 4 feet wide or wider.

An island isn't everything and sometimes it isn't the right thing for a given room. Other things that could work would be cleanup on the dining room wall ref and cooking on a large L on the window wall - storage on the hall wall - adds storage and seating. Possibly narrow depth storage on the hall wall, ref, oven, tall storage on the dining room wall and a 54' wide island containing sink and cooktop and counter, outside wall become fleet of windows or sliders.

My kitchen is similar to yours in size and wall issues. We had three doorways and closed up the second tot he driveway to create a hutch with fridge drawers in the adjoining breakfast room (closest to you on the left in the drawing. Other than that hutch, my kitchen is a little smaller than yours because one side is shorter than the other.

I'm attaching a link to a sketch of the elevation so you can consider another option.. The album also has the layout (the comments were to note electrical changes -- you can ignore those). The cooktop had been in the island with the micro on the other side and lost counter space on two of the 3 sides. We moved the cooktop to the opposite wall, and what makes it work is having the prep sink. We used a built-in fridge and opened up the aisle at that end of the island. The corner pantry was removed, ovens pushed down and pantry cabinets and a utility cabinets flank the fridge. The kitchen works well for us, but the changes were not our first thoughts.

Here is a link that might be useful: another thought for you

I have only scanned the posts, and took a quick look at a few of the pictures. My kitchen is roughly the same size as the one you are planning. The center island is about 10'x3', cooktop on one side (36'' aisle), cleanup sink, DW and dishes on the other side (41'' aisle), fridge, glasses, breakfast counter, food storage on the kitchen end, and about 10' x 13' seating on the far end. The counters are deep, so my measurements are not the same as yours. It works extremely well with multiple cooks (as many as 6) and is great for entertaining. The island extends just a bit beyond the cabinetry and will seat 3. Your longer island could accomodate more.

These are old pictures. We have new chairs and the aluminum foil and table are gone.

From the seating end:

clean up side

Cooking side:

Sorry for the mess!

Thank you all for your suggestions.

dinalo - The drawing should be to scale (those were done on floorplanner.com, it was the first website I found). The island is 3' wide in those drawings where as the base cabinets are 25.5" wide.

Rhome - I'm not quite clear on what you were suggesting, is it that we could put the fridge and stove on the wall where the sink is, and move the sink to the wall where the range is?

bmorepanic - We can definitely move the dining room door. You are right about not needing an island, I'm just worried if we don't have one then it is too much empty space. The 2nd idea you had with the wider island and a fleet of windows is definitely different from anything we had thought of, we will have to play around with that and see how it looks. Thank you.

Lascatch and Cotehele you both have beautiful kitchens. It looks like you both used somewhat similar layouts with similar space as ours. We will have to play around with the range on the far side of the island and the fridge down at the base where there is more room. I think there is definitely consensus from all who responded that the fridge likely has to move either on the dining room wall or at the far edges of one of the other walls so that there is maximum clearance.

By the way Lascatch I liked the blue cabinets with the built in fridge, I thought that aspect of the kitchen was really nice and added a little something different.

Cotehele - Your cabinets are similar to what we were thinking, do you mind me asking what type of cabinets they are?

Thank you all for your comments and ideas. I think we have decided that the space will work. We will definitely have to do more work in laying things out (will play around with all of your suggestions), but we just wanted to make sure the 14'x14' space will work before we get further along in the design for the rest of the work we are doing.

Thank you. The cabinets are quartersawn red oak. They are 5/8'' overlay.