In case it may help, here is a more visual view of the kitchen as it would be from the great room.

Thanks!

Measurements are more appreciated by the experts.

That said, I'm not an expert and I have some thoughts.

On the back wall I would reverse everything. Having the frig & MW all the way into the kitchen would have "visitors" continually crossing through the main areas of the kitchen. Reversing it, would allow others to come in and nuke a snack, or grab a drink from the frig. The way it is now, more congestion would happen. Without having clear measurements, I'm guessing the sink and cooktop will be at a diagonal from each other which should work out.

On the island, I would reverse the DW to the other side of the sink. Having to prep over a DW isn't the best.

Thanks Aloha - I will play around with reversing it and see how that may work out for us. Also, I never thought about it, but you have a very good point about prepping over a dishwasher. I have attached part of the floor plan, in case that helps with measurements. Only diffrence is the island is not attached to a wall as shown, there is no wall.

Why is the island so short and off center when compared with the perimeter?

Hollysprings - we initially had a wall that the island was up against and then realized we were able to remove the wall. We kept the island where it is, with the hope that since the space is now so open, it would help define the hallway from the kitchen. As to its length, the thought there was to keep it to the max length of a slab of quartz, avoiding the need for seams.

Whether you swap the fridge/oven area with the range or not, I'd suggest having the oven position on the "inside" relative to the range, rather than n the far side of the fridge.

It's always better to have counter landing space immediately beside both the fridge and any ovens. However is the design doesn't allow for that I always think that it's more important to have immediate landing space for something that may be hot, rather than just for the conveneience of loading and unloading a fridge. Hot pots are a safety issue!

BTW, if you are right-handed, it's more efficient to have the DW on the left of the sink. There's fewer changes of the items from hand to hand when loading and scraping, so fewrr opportunities to drop something and less body-twisting. Yeah, I know, it's counter intuitive.

HTH,
L.

L.

Bamber yes I would agree with moving the MW just adjacent to a counter.

I do question the flow through the home. I couldn't quite make what some of the adjacent rooms are used for. Hollysprings brings up a good question regarding the island being "off".

We decided to keep our island within the 10' limit as most counters 10' is the max and we didn't want a seam - even on corian. We were debating about just 6-12" over 10' not as much as it looks like you could have. We've been looking at a new product call Neolith which is 144" long x 45" w/o a seam. It is beyond awesome. We're looking at a Neolith Carrara marble look alike. I'm waiting on the estimate, but I'm getting the idea that it's very close to Ceasarstone etc.

Here is a link that might be useful: Neolith

This is sort of what I'm thinking. As others have pointed out, the island could be bigger and is here. There are definite reasons to "let go" of symmetry and centered; go for balance and interest instead. You are going to have some door problems (except for cooktop variation of bottom drawing). Hanging onto to symmetry will make those worse than shown here.

The yellow blocks are approximate door open positions. The microwave and the ref can run into each other. It can be partly solved with a micro where the door drops down instead of opening to the side. Happily, a lot of those are convection microwaves giving you a second small oven. BUT, still someone who isn't very spatially aware to have the opportunity to dent the refrigerator door on the open microwave door.

You can also see that even with some remediation of the placement of the dishwasher that the serpentine path leading between range-dw-micro-ref is still an issue ss is someone backing up from the range into someone at the sink. But because I'm not trying for symmetry, i.e. no centered sink in the island, there is tons more working room.

In the alternate, which isn't going to be everyone's cuppa tea, the range and sink have almost traded locations. Plus, you get enough room to have a prep sink on the same surface as prep and the cooktop. No drip, drip, drip of everything going to or from the island.

You get wall cabinets for dish storage as well as storing in drawers if you'd like. Gets rid of some spacing issues but develops one between the pantry and the open oven. That's why I would think about two other options.

Trade off to an oven under the micro and an induction cooktop. It would place the oven door on the back wall of the kitchen so all the big open doors would be on the same side, freeing you to bring the island 6 to 12 inches closer to the back wall (54" to 60" aisle).

Also, I'd look at the powder room, dining room to kitchen hallway and larder to see if there was a better way to arrange those so you could ditch the pantry (pull outs) cabinet completely. That would put you down to one door conflict of the microwave stack with the ref doors. That could then be solved by relocating the oven stack.

It would move the doorway to the larder (which you'll use multiple times per day) to be more convenient to the kitchen while downgrading the doorway to the dining room (which is likely to be used only for ceremonial occasions). I just don't like the whole concept of having the noisy end of a toilet facing the public spaces (and the visual show of the people doing various things while exiting the toilet).

Last thing is that people's perceptions of space are different. We can help tell you what is the suggested minimum spacing but we can't tell you what you should use. People can be really opposed to using spacing that other people think is just fine. I'm a big fan of taping down the layout and play cooking in it to see how you feel about an 11 foot round trip to drain a pot of pasta or fill a pot.

I'm also unsure how much company you, as chef, want when you're cooking. It sounds like that's a concern, but if that's true, then think about how much prep space you have, where helpers would be and whether you want to have sink real estate fights between the prep team and the cleanup teams.

Hth

Bmorepanic, Aloha and liriodendron, thank you all for your suggestions and thoughts. You all are a wealth of information and I wish I had posted sooner with more time to figure all of this out. I think increasing the length of the island is a good start, and some the back wall will need to be re-arranged to better keep in mind door swings and moving hot items from the microwave. A few door swing items going in my favor are the microwave door will swing down, and the fridge will be a single door. I am planning to stick with the range on the back wall option. I do think we need to consider distance between the island and back wall, and potentially shift it back a bit. I don't think I am too concerned about the symmetry with the island placement and need to focus on the functional space as illustrated by bemorepanic. Now, time to draw some of the options out and think about how we will really use the space! Thank you!