Hi all,

We are in the very initial stages of thinking about our kitchen. We've received some initial design ideas from our architect (which I'll describe below) but looking for other thoughts or directions as well. Floor plan of current (completely illogical and dysfunctional kitchen) below.

We will be relocating the laundry room so can take over that space. The opening of the kitchen to the family room is an arch (which can be extended if needed but not removed) and that wall is a load bearing wall. The doors near the current pantry go into the dining room and the curve you see at top (next to current laundry) is a breakfast nook (so we won't be putting the table in the kitchen itself). Note that the ceiling of the kitchen is slanted and the two dotted rectangles in the floor plan denote skylights (which can't be moved).

The one thing we absolutely know we want to do is have an island that had the long side facing out to the family room. The current island makes no sense and is just in the way. With that said we are not "eat at the island" people. We want the island more for storage and prep space.

Our architect has basically suggested not taking the wall down between the kitchen and current laundry room and making that space into the walk-in pantry. She then suggests removing the current window over sink to relocate the stove there and put windows on either side and then putting the sink in the island. This design is interesting but we are hesitant about cutting holes in our exterior wall and my husband isn't a huge fan as that wall looks onto our neighbor's house whereas the window in the current laundry looks out to the yard.

We are super open to ideas so would love to get Houzz's suggestions for us to think about. I think I want a little bar area (with wine fridge and serving storage) around the door to the dining room, but not sure how to make this flow. Not opposed to adding divisions to the space (it is quite large).

Anyways, I'll stop and let you all do your magic!