One potentially-important thing that isn’t labelled: those two doors at the bottom left of the sketch lead to the basement (the one gong left) and the garage (the one going down).

Some background:

- I don't have a strict budget at this point because it will depend on the layout possibilities. I'd like to keep it under $30,000, generally. I can do most or all of the flooring work, electrical, and drywall. My prior post had someone suggest adding several feet to the back of the house. That level of overhaul is probably not a worthwhile investment on this particular house/in this particular location.

- I plan to move the door-wall to an adjacent room (which I'll also do myself). So we can assume that wall/space will be available. (Although if you have great ideas that don’t involve me needing to move the door-wall, by all means, let me know!)

- I figure I’ll then be able to move the refrigerator (a new one, probably counter-depth) to where the door-wall currently is.

- The pantry that looks like a closet can probably come out entirely and that wall can just be flat. Then there are a lot of options for that wall.

- The door you see on the wall behind the refrigerator is a bathroom.

What I really hate is the lack of definition. In particular, lack of definition in the large open area where you’d presumably put a table. We tried putting a table there. It sucked. Why?

As you can see, there are six— SIX— entrances to that space. From the den, from the garage, from the basement, from the hallway/entranceway, from the other section of the kitchen, and from the door-wall leading out to the deck. So having a table in this area ends up just being something you have to walk around constantly. Once we move the door-wall, we’ll be down to only five entrances to this spice. Marginal improvement.

But the space will still be ill-defined and somewhat useless.

In an ideal world, i’d love to find a way to just have one door in the corner instead of two. Like one door somehow leading to both the basement or the garage. But idk if that’s even possible.

I’ve considered some sort of half-wall with a countertop as you’d walk in from the garage. Give us a place to put stuff as you walk in from the garage while also defining the eat-in space a little better. But I worry that’d look super weird or out-of-place.

I hate this kitchen. It is the one thing I despise about this house and it is the one thing that made me not want to buy this house. Fixing it (if possible) will turn this from a 5-7 year house into a 12-15 year house. So I’m open to anything. Give me your thoughts. From big to small.