Hello!! Renovating a 1970's ranch. A little background info: The kitchen is original to the house and the adjoining family room at one time was the garage (before we owned it). We are hoping to open up the kitchen to the family room and to enlarge it a bit by removing the 5' dividing wall. We know that we will need to add a header to carry the load and we're fine with that. As you can see from the pics below, the kitchen is very small as compared to the family room!

We are a family of 3 (sometimes 4 when the eldest comes home), we do cook (by no means gourmet) and we would like to have some type of "bar/island". We don't want to change the exterior walls/windows, but are willing to modify any interior "stuff".

I'm giving you the opportunity to design the kitchen! We've gotten 3 different plans from remodelers and I'm not sold on any of them. I don't want to influence your creativity so I won't even share them.

Dilemma: If we get rid of the wall and move the refrigerator to the spot where the range is currently, where would the range go?

Existing Floor Plan:

Modified floor plan w/o dividing wall: