Thank you for the nice drawings and description of your project. Are you water and gas sources limited to specific locations?

You have a nice big dining room, I wonder if you can steal some space there for the office, something you could tuck behind doors when you entertain?

Thank you both.

Water and gas are pretty flexible and should be able to go anywhere along the top, left, or bottom walls or near the riser in the middle of the room, but our architect is skeptical that we would be able to plumb for a sink or DW in a center island or peninsula

The dining room is going to be divided into a third bedroom and dining area, so that space is already accounted for. That said, if there is a fabulous kitchen layout that involves only a desk rather than an enclosed office space, I can try to sell that to my husband, whose office it would be! But I too prefer him to have an enclosed space, because he has a lot of computer equipment that ideally would be able to be hidden behind a closed door.

It's fantastic that you have the space to create a 3 bedroom. What size dining table do you need to accommodate?

our current table is 42x85 oval and we have been able to seat 6-8 comfortably. We are fine with this setup but willing to buy new furniture if it fits the space better (and does not seat fewer than 8). The current plan is to open up the dining area to the foyer so we are less cramped in the dining space once we create the third bedroom. If we don't open it up, the room will end up only 9-10' wide, which I think is tight.

benjesbride - were you referring to what size dining table in the kitchen? We are flexible there, but need to seat 4 at a minimum.

I was asking about the dining room, not kitchen seating. Do you have to have two tables for dining? I'm thinking if you have one nice sized dining space you'll have more room to dedicate to the kitchen, office or laundry.

we strongly prefer to have both. The kitchen seating is so useful with small kids, and we like to have a separate dining space that is closed off from the kitchen when entertaining

It looks like you're sacrificing a lot of function to gain an eat-in space. My youngest just turned 5, so I'm not too far removed from the toddler phase. Have you thought about adding double doors to the dining room so you have more connectivity between the kitchen and the dining area?

I'd have to think about that. It might be ok if we could do it in a way that allowed us to keep an eye on the kids in the dining area while prepping/serving meals

Thanks so much! No question that would be much simpler! And the sight line to the living room would be great. We actually saw another apartment in the building where they took down the dining room walls and put in double-doors as you suggested. (They also converted the half bath to a full and opened up the office/kitchen.) I think that even after many years of cooking in a very efficient galley kitchen, I'm not quite ready to give up on my dream of a true eat-in kitchen though.

On thought I had was to bump out the left wall by a foot or so, deepening the window ledges, to minimize the odd bump-outs there and hopefully get better counter space. That might also help narrow the expanse in the center of the room if we don't have some sort of island or peninsula.

Would you do this kind of banquette at the window?

Yes - I find that configuration not quite as functional an L-shaped banquette, but I would absolutely take it over having no eat-in space in the kitchen! (That diagram itself is so helpful, just to see all of the minimum requirements laid out in one place.)

And just to make sure... The walls in red cannot be removed?

Sorry... Another question... is the back door used frequently?

The wall in red could be moved, but we wanted to try to create a large closet there, (perhaps with mudroom-style bench and cubbies) as a dumping ground for kids things. But yes, it could be moved.

The back door is only used for taking out the trash.

Could this WIC be opened up for bench and cubbies instead; the area in yellow?

Here's my first take. I didn't see a benefit to removing the powder room in this kitchen/nook layout, so I kept it and just moved the sink to make space for a pocket office next to the window. Anyway. Maybe it will spark some more ideas for you.

Funny enough, your questions had gotten me thinking along the same lines. Here's the quick sketch I made before I saw yours.

I love where you put the W/D though, and I'm also thinking now that we should keep the half-bath. I'm definitely going to play around with this a little more but I am much happier about where this is headed now! Thank you so much.

Watch your dimensions and also think through your process for preparing a meal.

In your drawing above, you need landing space to the right of the sink and your refrigerator doesn't look deep enough (my counter depth fridge has a counter depth fridge box, but the door and handles stick out another four inches for a total of 30".) Also, standard depth counters are 26", not 24.

Here's another idea.

very interesting, thank you! I like the details like the window into the office to let in some light, and the openness of the entryway to the kitchen.