I live in a small 1950's ranch with a walkout basement. Long-term (10 years) we have a big reno planned, but short-term we want to fix up the kitchen to make it more useable. Current cabinets are literally falling apart, and the layout isn't great. The opening to the dining room is currently mostly filled with a narrow base cabinet and glass uppers for holding barware. However, the narrowness + the uppers mean that this area can't be used for foodprep without hitting your head. Blech. Because we don't plan for this to be our "forever" kitchen, goal is to keep the re-do affordable and avoid structural work as much as possible.

We'd like more storage, more countertop space, and a less congested entry to the kitchen from the foyer. In general, we are more of a fan of "closed concept", as we keep a messy kitchen and don't want to see it everywhere. We are not looking to add any seating. One of the biggest paint points is that the current fridge sticks out into the doorway opening A LOT, as it is 36+ inches deep when you include the handle.

Some contradictory brainstorms so far:

- Buy a counterdepth fridge and keep it in the current location

- Put in normal base cabinets across most of the opening to the dining room, lose the over head cabinets

- Move the fridge some place else, perhaps the bottom left corner, and close up a lot of the current opening to the dining room.

- Put in a narrow pantry against the south wall

- Put in peninsula jutting out from the north west, blocking that portion of the entry to the dining room.

As you can see, we are open to most anything that doesn't involve removing load bearing walls.

Please! Give me your expert thoughts and guidance. :)

This was provided when we bought the house and gives a general idea of the current layout:

t great, etc.