Not knowing your full floorplan makes this difficult but I would probably go for the area where your microwave is sitting.

Post edited (slightly) since Patricia & Jakvis replied. I need to draw it out and post it, but I'm afraid it will look like a very young child drew it. Haha!

Perfection is not required :-)

Are you getting new cabinets or just working with what you have?

New cabinets throughout. I would like to remove the soffit above the sink, I am working on the floor plan now and will post it when I finish.

The floor plan just needs to show entries into the kitchen. A simple drawing is OK. Most folks will be more concerned with your kitchen working triangle (Sink, Refrigerator, Range). You don't want them too close or too many steps away.

Other items will be vision sight flow of the room. Putting a refrigerator in the wrong place can make your kitchen look smaller if it blocks sightlines.

Ideally, I would want a counter depth fridge at then end of the counter run the sink is on. Don't like to schlep food across the kitchen for sink prep.Could you do with a smaller window there to make room for it?

Your kitchen isn't very big. Sounds like you're trying to change your kitchen to an open floor plan with the living room. That means loss of closets or cabinets usually and no where to put the refrigerator. This might not be a great idea.

Can you show us a picture of all the sides of the room. The fridge esp.

Here is a rough drawing with the current layout and placement of things. It is a galley kitchen & not too big, but hoping to open it up and lose the bar on the 8’4” wall. If we do open it up we will add some cabinets in place of the bar.

Are you willing to change out the breakfast nook window so you can run the counters the full length of the kitchen?

decoenthusiaste -We looked at counter depth refrigerators yesterday. I don't think I can do that. They are just too small.

benjesbride - I didn't really want to change anything with the windows for two reasons. First, our living room doesn't get much natural light so I was hoping that opening it up would help with that. Second, our house is brick and I can't picture anything in my head that would look good on the exterior if we lose or get a smaller window.

Any chance you could rotate your picture (with Living room upside down) so it's easier to read?

Nat - can you save us the math and comment with the overall length of this space?

If you can make the sink window larger and use the brick to close up the nook window, this layout would serve you well. I took 36" off the dining room end of the kitchen to make the dining room larger and open the kitchen up more to the living room. This layout was common in my previous neighborhood. I do not recommend removing any more wall between kitchen and living room. The upper cabinets and counter space for small appliances is very handy.

Exterior wall:

Living room wall:

I forgot to write that down. The long walls are 19' 5". Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure that is something that we would do, but it is something I hadn't thought of.

*Edit - I also forgot to write down that from the corner of the 8'4" wall to the opening into the laundry room is 45".

Can you sketch out the basic whole-house layout so we can see how the kitchen relates to the rest of the house, how traffic flows through, etc?

One option might be closing off the opening into the laundry room. When you enter through the garage take a left to go to the kitchen and a right to got to the front entrance. It's a little odd, but convenient so that we don't have to walk all the way around to get to the kitchen. I've actually considered closing off the door that goes into the front entry because the space is awkward, but now maybe I should consider closing the other opening.

If you're getting all new cabinets, why isn't a kitchen designer doing this work for you???

If we change the layout of the kitchen. I will probably hire an interior designer. I'm just trying to get some ideas first. We are looking into using Lowes KD services, but not sure that's the route we want to go. The Lowes KD & GC are coming out on Friday to measure and tell us if the wall we want to remove is load bearing. We haven't done a major renovation before and really aren't sure what to expect on the cost so depending on what we find out Friday will determine how we proceed.

It's good--and free--to brainstorm ideas. Please don't hesitate to post a KD's (cabinet saleperson's?) plan here to be vetted.

Get a brown refrigerator and put it in front of those blinds. Nobody will know it's there.

Haha! Aren’t they awful Lawrence? The kitchen is an eyesore and I haven’t done a thing to it since we moved in 9 years ago. I haven’t even removed nails from the walls that the previous owner left. My dog broke those blinds about 8 years ago and I refuse to replace them or do anything else until we remodel.