You can still have an L shaped kitchen, with the range on the back wall and fridge and side pantry on the mudroom wall. You could have upper cabinets on the fridge wall, or end the uppers in the corner, and have a smaller window into the MR. If you can move the sink drain a few inches, moving the DW from one side of the sink to the other is fairly easy.

I made the island slightly longer and put dish storage in drawers facing the sink and DW. The upper cabinet to the right of the sink could be open shelves, or an open box, with storage all the way to the counter. It would be a good location for glasses and cups, although you might have to unload those first the counter, then to the shelves.

MW can be on a shelf next to the fridge, or a MW drawer on the island, facing the fridge.

I've attached a rough sketch of the main floor of the house (not drawn to scale, but you can get an idea for the layout). Regarding the kitchen - the pantry (as shown on this sketch) is a mess and will be taken out to provide more space in the kitchen. This change is included in the designs I attached to my original post. And, as I mentioned before, the enclosed stairs to the attic and basement will be opened up. For the time being we'll install pull-down stairs in the hall in front of the 2 front bedrooms and bathroom. The basement stairs will be kept in place and refinished.

For some info on how the space is used...We are a family of three, me, my husband and a 2yo. We're expecting a baby in Feb. We'd like to open the kitchen into the dining room for a more open feel in general, but also so we can see kids playing in the living room while we're cooking. There's currently no play area visible from the kitchen. We'll need a mudroom because we usually enter from the back of the house. We need all three bedrooms. We don't currently spend a lot of time in the dining room, but hoping this will change some with a more open plan. I realize the island in the kitchen will be a little tight to walk behind, but we've done the best we can with the plans there and we want some seating in the kitchen.

Hope this drawing helps with ideas for my above-posted layout questions for the kitchen. Thanks!

Where is your driveway/garage/primary entrance in relation to the whole house floor plan above?

No driveway. We enter the garage from the alley in back and then come thru the back door. Front door does get used, but probably less (street parking out front; we're in the city so driveways are a rarity).

One of the best things about having a kitchen on the back of a house is so you can see into the backyard. Since your kitchen location won't offer that, did you consider reconfiguring your house so public spaces are at the front and private spaces are at the back?

In a small home with little kids it is so nice when their rooms are in a quieter area of the house. In your home's present layout, potentially noisy spaces share a common wall with all the bedrooms. Public space and private space separated and buffered by a stair well and a bathroom should greatly improve noise transfer.

So this is what I was wondering about. Your stairwell stays in place, front bedroom becomes kitchen, main bath gets a bit bigger, secondary bedrooms are in kitchen and mudroom, master bedroom could have room for a walk in closet or a future en suite bathroom.

Downside is that you have to enter on the side of the house from the garage and not the back.

This is just food for thought. I spent almost a year working on our floor plan to turn our small 2 bedroom, 1 bath into an efficient 3 bedroom, 2 bath and then rearranging layouts became a hobby :-)

If you want to explore that idea--even if just for fun--please post the dimensions of the dining/living/front bedroom and we'll see what we can come up with.

Thanks for your comments, benjesbride, and I couldn't agree more. Noise and bedroom placement in our house is a fair annoyance. We are always trying to be so quiet in the kitchen, which is a hard space to
keep quiet! This is just how these old homes are laid out (charming, yet...).

If we were to ever tackle this larger layout problem, I think we'd open the back two bedrooms up for a sort of open kitchen/family room area that would also house stairs to the attic, which would be finished with a master suite, two kids bedrooms and bath. This is a common solution on our block where many homes are like ours. By the time we get around to such big projects, we might have teenagers on our hands.

But you might not have to wait. Just because everyone else moves the stairs and finishes the attic doesn't mean that's the best use of space and resources. It just sounds a lot more expensive. I'd be happy to draw something up for you to present to your GC to get a ballpark estimate on such a change. It might not be much more expensive than what you're planning and you'd gain the benefits of having quiet bedrooms and your kitchen near your living room.

I like mama's idea but since your aisles will be very tight it may not be a very good idea to walk in front of the range every time anyone needs to go back and forth b/w the fridge and the sink or even from the other rooms to reach the fridge when island seats are occupied.

Instead, I'd suggest keeping the window, using the south wall for storage and snacks and have an island on casters. Island can have a drop down counter for 2 for perching or quick meals.