Happy I can't say I love having to go through the mudroom and study room to get to the kitchen from the garage. Where is your fridge going to be? Ideally you want it on the wall near the butler's pantry/close to dining room so it's out of the work zones, but that means more of a walk (and through your work zones) to put away groceries.

True - what do you think of adding another door from the front garage to the inside of the house where the butler's pantry is, directly across the pantry?

btw, we will be changing the mudroom layout to the way mrs pete suggested in the other forum so only one garage door into the mudroom.

I would say something like this with the arrangement you have. The range can go anywhere around the middle of that run. But the DW is not particularly close to dish storage unless it's in the island. And what is all the storage over at the end of the nook?

I disagree with CPA and just about everyone else about the "long walk" with groceries. We carried groceries 5 blocks and up 52 stairs from the street before we got into the apartment for over ten years. Walking through a couple rooms? Big deal.

If you do a big shopping it's an inconvenience perhaps once every two weeks to maneuver through a few doorways. If you do a lot of small shopping, not really a problem. That said, I would make sure the doorways are wide so they are easy to get through carrying things and that the doorswings are not in the way.

Getting groceries into the house is just one of my pet peeve things, because I have seen people ruin perfectly good floorplans or put the kitchen --where a lot of people spend a lot of time-- in a bad place in relation to the exterior views and access to the outside just to make sure that the kitchen was next to the garage and actually having to carry something more than a few feet was minimized. I saw many objections to a plan here years ago because the groceries would have to be carried ten extra feet.

I suppose if you wanted you could have a fire rated hatch of some sort next to the fridge in my drawing to load groceries directly into that corner of the kitchen. Sort of a dumb waiter without the elevator. But that would only work if groceries were brought into the front garage.

Just knowing our family, I think forcing everyone to go through mudroom before entering the house would work better then a mudroom to the side. If the hook for their coat is not right in their path, no one will bother using it and coats/bags/etc will end up elsewhere in the house. That is why we didn't make a mudroom to the side with more direct entry to kitchen.

@palimpset - thanks I like what you have drawn in. What do you all think of the width of the aisles? Too big or just right? Our current kitchen has narrower aisles.

There is a lot of storage in the nook. I'm sure I could use it for something! But for me the question is, would I need more space in the nook for a dining table? So I'm not sure about that yet.