We have a major kitchen dilemma. We have a small kitchen that we bumped out the back of the house to gain a little extra space. So the issue is that now we have a large support beam running right through the kitchen where the exterior wall used to be. There is also some plumbing from upstairs that will need to run along side it. This means that in our small kitchen with 8-ft. ceilings, we will have an approximately 12"x12" (hopefully no bigger!) beam running right through it, and not in a convenient spot. We have to figure out how this is going to work with the cabinets. Originally we wanted to go the whole way to the ceiling with them, and we still want to maximize storage, since it really isn't a large space. I've seen many posts about similar beam issues, but they all seem to address nice, we'll call them "dainty" beams, not behemoths like this one.

Below is a recent picture of the construction site. The ladders that are lying down are under the future kitchen window.

Below that is what we were thinking for the rough kitchen layout. We have a 21" (face measurement) full-height corner cabinet for small appliances (kitchen aid, toaster, coffee pot, etc. to be tucked away but still plugged in). There's then a 7" slanted base cabinet on either side to bring that corner cabinet out to standard counter depth, where we were just going to store cookie sheets, muffin tins, cutting boards, etc. The total measurement of that, for the base comes to about 39" from the corner. That will probably come to about right about where the beam starts on the ceiling, maybe up to 1" within it, depending on the drywall.