Hi,

We are looking to remodel the main area of our house to open things up. We currently have our family room, dining room, and kitchen as 4 separate rooms. In the middle is a triangular section with a fireplace on the dining room side and a built in buffet cabinet on the family room side (these two rooms used to be reversed). It also has the pantry on the kitchen side. We also have a lot of Half Walls dividing the rooms up.

We want to come up with a way to open up the middle section so it's not such a huge waste of space. Some of the key points are:
- We want to keep a fireplace but would probably flip it to the other side or put in a dual sided gas fireplace. We would also make the whole center section a lot smaller.
- In the kitchen, we would possibly add a dual oven somewhere but also don't want to lose the pantry area. Not sure where we'd fit it in.
- The section with the fireplace can be extended to either have the pantry or the double ovens on the kitchen side.

The attached images are ones I whipped up using Sweet Home 3D. They are pretty much to scale but the actual details are just generic place holder images to get the point across. I'm also attaching pictures of our actual house the way it is now (pardon the mess).

We're looking for any ideas, options, pros, cons, etc. We have a couple remodelers in our area coming out to look at the place but are also coming up with our own ideas. We're definitely looking to do as much of the work as we can but need someone to come up with a good layout as the first step.

UPDATE: We'd also consider turning the island into a peninsula and having it come out from the wall below the sink to be between the kitchen and family room, or to have it come out from the Fireplace area to have it be between the Kitchen and Dining area. (See pic 3 in the link below)

Thanks!!

Picture Album:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/poa6i9mk16511wb/xV1MTaBFAT

1: Birds-eye layout of the current house
2: 3D view of the current house
3: Birds -eye view of what I came up with
4: 3D view of what I came up with
5: Current House viewing from Dining Room
6: Current House viewing from Front Door
7: Current House viewing from Family Room
8: Current House viewing from Kitchen