Think about flow; how a bag of tea gets from the grocery bag in the car to the storage area to the area where it will seep to where it will cross between your lips, and all points in between. Laying out furniture in the spaces may help also.

Think about the work triangle; the space between the sink, refrigerator, and stove and the cooking activity that occurs within and around that space.

Can you supply us with the portion of the plan that includes all the spaces from the garage to the dining area? Are you working with an architect?

I worry that with the new Houzz forum design and posting protocol (I am still clinging to the "old forum") - these kitchen posts will never be seen by the kitchen experts... Sigh. Progress....

Sure. I'm not sure the quality of the photo is great, can you see the small text?

jannicone, where should I post this instead? I'm new to posting on Houzz though I've been a fan and user for years. I appreciate your help!

Hi chancielouise - congratulations on your soon to be new home !

How far along are you in the design / construction process ?

What is the standard number and the maximum number of people you would like to fit in your dining room ?

As drawn, your kitchen feels fairly small - if needed, it looks as though you could enlarge the size of the kitchen with space taken from your large dining room.

Columbus, we are at the end of our design process but have yet to break ground on construction. Figuring out the location of the kitchen appliances is holding us up, thus reaching out on Houzz. Daily we will have 2 adults and 1 child (hopefully soon to be 2 children) utilizing dining spaces. We imagined using the bar stools at the peninsula or island for daily breakfast and maybe dinner dining (as we do in our current home). On Sundays we host family for Sunday brunch and we usually have 6-10 adults and 4 kiddos under age 5. One of the grandparents is elderly and wheelchair bound. We hoped to buy an 8-10' extendable dining table for the dining room to accommodate the large family gatherings.

The pantry seems to take up a lot of space with empty open space, interrupting the work flow, and you could use more continuous counterspace and cabinets for dishes. Can the pantry move?

My townhouse had an island separating the kitchen and dining room. It worked well. My new house will be the same (only it will be a peninsula rather than an island. It makes the flow work well for our style of entertaining.

Consider this concept:

Who does dishes more? That person should probably decide. That being said, I agree with you to leave the peninsula bare. That should be an entertaining space, not an area to get clogged up with dirty dishes. Those should be able to be hidden at the back of the kitchen until everyone goes home and it's time to clean up.

My kitchen has a very similar layout to the one Mark just posted. It's a very efficient layout and I love it, but the dishes do pile up in the middle of the kitchen for all to see. We don't entertain much, so I don't mind.

Mark Bischak, Architect, I LOVE the concept except our kitchen is designed to be 18' wide making our island 6' wide. Your island appears to be longer than it is wide. Would it be acceptable to rotate your island 90 degrees to the left and have the sink across from the fridge?

It is just a concept, make adjustments with your architect as you see fit.