If you scroll through the pics in this blog, you'll find quite a few corner-prep pics:
48 amazing space saving small kitchens

Have you considered removing the cabs and using open shelves in that area?

I have thought about open shelving. My concerns are:

1. Giving up storage space in a small (appx. 10' x 10') kitchen.

2. Having an unbalanced look, as I really need the uppers on the other side of the sink for dish storage (above the dishwasher). Let me see if I can find photos to illustrate.

Are your ceilings high enough that you could move the cabinets up? One of my favorites:

This shelf is a little robust, but the same idea (and I love this kitchen).

I've seen suggestions here to make the base and upper cabinets a few inches deeper to increase storage and counter depth. In your case you might be able to use standard wall cabs and deeper bases so the uppers wouldn't be in your face as much.

Are you keeping most of the existing cabinetry? If not, then I highly recommend deeper base cabinets, as may_flowers suggests. If you aren't doing custom deeper cabinets, you can pull the standard base cabs out a few inches to achieve the same end.

I think the key is a good under cabinet lighting in that area. It would work just fine as a prep space. An island is nice but not a necessity.

Here's mine. Kitchen reno still in progress but I do have an upper over the area and only the one main sink. UCL and plug mold under cab. I kept the upper to balance the opposite wall of cabinets and I don't like open shelving. Sorry but I haven't figured out how to get photos right side up!

Thanks, everyone! We are still in the very preliminary stages. What precipitated this was the thread from yesterday about the Stages 45 sink (which I had been considering). There was a lot of discussion there regarding uppers over a prep area, and it got me thinking about options for our remodel.

Here's a photo of the kitchen from the listing; we have since replaced the cabinet hardware, cooktop, hood, and dishwasher. I have a tentative plan drawn that would basically keep the layout but allow for a 30" oven/steam convection stack (current is 24") and replace the cabinetry with something more functional. The soffits should be removable; I think they were added in the last remodel.

If you're tall consider uplifting doors for the uppers. I had uppers in nearly all my kitchens in the prep area+over the sink, so I probably got used to them. In my current kitchen the uppers have uplifting doors and I usually leave them open when I'm prepping/do cleanup, so it feels more open like having shelves instead of cabs with doors (to me at least).

If you're doing a gut remodel, this would be my recommendation for a pleasant prep space. :) But it doesn't address dish storage.

Something I noticed about many of the pics of the corner prep spaces is the extra, or larger, windows on the sink wall, making the kitchens bright. Could have been the pro lighting for the photo shoots, too.

Consider deepening the counters of your sink run and your cooktop run at least 3". This will give you more "air space" if it's an issue for you. This will also give you more storage - particularly in your base cabinets if you can get them 27" deep instead of the standard 24".

Our family is tall (ranging from 5'10" to 6'7"), but we don't find prepping in front of uppers claustrophobic - and most of our uppers in our prep area are 15" deep with standard depth counters.

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When I saw your kitchen I immediately thought of mama goose's idea. Even if you don't do the windows all the way across (and why wouldn't you!) eliminating the L in the uppers doesn't really lose you much cupboard space and it feels much more open. Although, if you are keeping the basic layout, you probably store the dishes above the dishwasher, and cupboards there without any on the left of the sink might look unbalanced.

I prep in a corner, but the cooktop is immediately on the right, and on the left is a <12" drawer then the sink, so it is a tight corner. The uppers die into the sink wall. If they wrapped around, it'd be too claustrophobic.

MamaGoose always has great ideas...and I love her kitchen :)

But if you can't spare the storage around the window, what if you do something like this....with the uppers by the RANGE? Just to the right of the VENT.

I had to show it on this left sink upper...because I cannot do the Paint program on a slant. But as suggested earlier, this will give you some nice shelf space for spices, etc...and a little more room to prep. The shelf could be more shallow than the upper. Maybe 4" to 6" deep?

Our place is still under construction so my kitchen is currently buried under boxes and missing a floor and appliances and glass panels in the uppers (they're just big empty frames now). However, I will show you what I can because I am also put off by staring at a wall and cabinets. It totally does feel claustrophic and dark and closed in, and I took a lot of measures to avoid that.

What I did was partially inspired by this kitchen (also posted above):

1) All of my upper cabinets are only 30" tall and installed flush to our not-even-8' ceilings. The distance between my counter and the bottom of my uppers is roughly 28". This was both because it makes using the counters a more open, light, airy affair and because that is the perfect height for a range hood to be (they usually recommend 26"-30" above a counter), so the cabinet my range hood is in could be the same height as all my other cabinets. (I just thought that was a cleaner look and de-emphasized the range.)

There actually was a bonus benefit to doing this with the uppers, which was that for some reason, having such a large gap between the uppers and counter REALLY makes our ceilings seem taller. Strikingly so, and everyone agrees. Who knows why, but the optical illusion is AWESOME.

That said, this is not a good solution for short people who want to use their upper cabinets all the time. I am almost 5'9", and my husband is 5'11", and storage-wise, our uppers are 80% superfluous. So this works for us.

2) On one wall, shown below, I have the base cabinets bumped out to 30" deep (as opposed to the standard 24"), so the uppers are 6" farther from your face than normal. On that wall (under the glass cabinets), I am installing a floating shelf as in the first picture I posted. But you can see the counter seems airy and not at all crowded with stuff in your face. (To orient you, the fridge is going to the left of the glass cabinets, the range is going where the cat's stuff is on the floor, and the sink and the other prep counter are out of the picture to the right.)

P.S. DEFINITELY just do a big window if that is financially in the cards. That is the best and most complete solution by far.

I have a secondary prep space that faces a wall with cabinetry. My cabinetry there is standard depths. (Well, 13" deep uppers, but as inset cabinets, that's really the same as 12" overlay cabinets.) One thing I did was to create a "hutch like" upper (and lower) cabinet set up there. On the uppers, I put a set of open shelves flanked by regular cabinets (and there are stacked glass fronted cabinets above all that.) The middle shelves are about 30" wide and I think each side cabinet is around 15-18" wide. The trick I used to make it feel more open was to simply raise the middle shelving by 4 inches or so (it's just a shorter section of cabinetry). That gives you a little extra breathing room in that space for the stand mixer, etc, without it feeling crowded. It looks really nice, IMHO.

Here is an in progress photo. I really need to take final photos . . . It looks nicer now. :)

szruns: Beautiful kitchen! Love all those windows and your upper hutch-like cabs work so well there.

so many great ideas on how to open up the space!

on dish storage - if you can scoot the sink & d/w toward the left, you may end up with room for a 24" drawer stack on the outside of the d/w. IME, that is enough for everyday dishes. (we have a 24" drawer stack w/ 3 drawers + 1 hidden drawer inside the bottom drawer. they hold silverware/adult dishes/kid dishes, and coffee cups in the hidden drawer. glasses are in another spot, near the fridge. if we didn't need a whole drawer for kid dishes, they could live in this stack as well.)

Thanks, everyone! There's a lot for me to think about. I love seeing all the photos! A few things:

1. Windows would be great, but I'm not sure there's enough room in the budget for it. It would require moving some electrical items around on the outside wall, too. That would also allow us to move the dishwasher over and add dish drawers, because the sink wouldn't be tied to the window.

2. I like the idea of pulling the cabinets forward; there's really a lot of floor space (though not enough for an island, of course). We are strongly considering Barker Cabinets, which I think makes deeper cabinets possible.

3. I love the cabinets raised to the ceiling with shelves under. I definitely need to think about step stool solutions, though, because we are both 5'6"!

Expounding on elizardbethday's idea:

In that layout, you couldn't unload the DW into the drawers. You lose valuable counter space to the left of the sink. It also seems to make the DW the focal point instead of the sink.

I'm going to get you guys some better photos and maybe a layout sometime today. I think that will help.

I think may_flowers is correct about the dishwasher issue. I think we could do open shelving for everyday plates and such above the dishwasher, but I'm still a little hesitant about the neatness (or lack thereof) and the dust.

DW's can be paneled, and unless small kids are unloading the DW, I don't know why it wouldn't work next to a drawer. Any items in the back of the trays, that can't be reached comfortably, could be set on the counter, then placed in the drawer when the DW is closed. That cabinet in the left corner would be a good size for a trash pullout, convenient for both prepping and clean-up. I'm going to add the most recent off-centered sink/window thread.

Rough mock-up:

I prefer the sink/dishwasher placement in the first "big window" mock-up posted. Not only does it have nice symmetry, but it means your prep counter is bigger and a much larger portion of it is under the window. That just seems a lot more pleasant for when you are prepping. I wouldn't mind walking around a bit more to put away dishes.

Without a floor plan with measurements it's hard to recommend anything, but no one has raised the "cart" option yet, so I will. An island cart with wheels that lock and unlock can serve as excellent, mobile prep space and entertainment serving space that can be tucked out of the way when you want to recover your floor space, although from your image it's hard to know whether you'd need to. Carts can be literally any dimensions, can be made from lower cabs or completely different materials, can house trash tilt-outs or be open like baker's racks. They can blend into your cabinetry or bring in a splash of color you might be too timid to try on a more permanent fixture. In fact, their main feature is flexibility.

Ok, here is a rough floor plan for the remodel. It's not perfect, but it gives more precise measurements than wide angle lenses!

A roll-out isn't an option right now, but it might be in the future. That 24" cabinet next to the refrigerator could theoretically be replaced with a roll-out cart. Right now, it houses the trash (and, yes, it's inconvenient!).

Wow, you lucked OUT. This is an extremely functional layout. All you need is a sink with an off-set drain so you can put the trash under the sink.

The only thing I can see an argument for changing is if you aren't attached to the wall ovens, it would be nice to have a counter where the ovens are instead (ovens would then go under the cooktop). Just so a second person could have a stretch of counter space too. But only if you'd rather a second work space instead of double ovens.

With the kind of savings you will get from not moving stuff around, I'd definitely go for the big window.

Thanks, Jillius! After more than 5 years of trying to work with an 80+ year old kitchen (and 4 of planning to remodel it), it was nice to move into one that has issues but is really functional. We are going to remodel this in a year or so, but it's easy enough to work with right now.

I have considered doing a range instead of a wall oven, but we just replaced the cooktop and really want to do a steam convection somewhere. I also really like having pan storage below the cooktop and baking pan storage below the wall ovens.

Since they're on 3 feet away, you might use the cabinets beside the fridge for dish storage. If you use deeper cabinets, you'll have more storage, and more counter space to place a MW. Just leave enough room to open the refrigerator door past 90°.

Do you have a pantry?

I happened across another kitchen with corner prep, this one with open shelves and a cabinet. Oldhouse1's stunning kithen.

Oh, I love that one, mama goose! It's very different stylistically from our ultimate kitchen, but framing the window is a great idea.

I am wondering if your kitchen and layout isn't the perfect situation for one of those oversized sinks that come with all the accessories (cutting boards, etc.). So your sink can be part of your prep counter, which would mean more prep would happen in front of the window. You do have space for that on that wall.

Jillius, the reason I posted this was because of a Kohler Stages 45 review that led me to believe those sinks feel really closed in with uppers!

I am definitely planning around a Stages 45, if I can.

Oh, I thought that you read that randomly and it just made you consider your uppers. I didnt realize that you were considering the sink itself. That would be great, though!

Especially with a bigger window above it, that would be a dream prep space. You'd not have to bother bumping out cabinets or any of the rest of it, which would save a bunch of money.

Instead of upper cabinets I put in more windows. I love the openness and functionality of not having the upper cabinets (there seemed to be quite a bit of the upper cabinet that was not easy to access). Thanks to GWer's advice I have lots of drawers and this is where all my plates, mugs, cups, etc go - so easy to reach! I do have an island, though, which allows me more storage space.

I like the idea of open shelves too, if more windows don't work out for you. They keep the open feeling and you won't lose items in the back, dark corners of upper cabinets. (Can you tell I'm not a fan of upper cabinets!)