Do you have a floorplan of the rooms? (scetch is fine)

http://www.houzz.com/%2B%22kitchen-remodel%22-%2B%22opening-up%22

http://www.houzz.com/%2B%22kitchen-remodel%22-%2B%22remove-wall%22

Here are a couple of articles on l and u shaped kitchens that may help. Most of these are open concepts. When searching houzz photos try open floor plan.
http://houzz.com/ideabooks/212920

http://houzz.com/ideabooks/212922

My husband and I are in the process of doing the same kinda thing. Our kitchen is a box.....(38 year old house). Kitchen box beside the dining room box. We're removing the entire wall that separates the kitchen from the dining room officially making it one BIG rectangle box. LOL Everything is getting changed. Appliances are moving.....squeezing an island in (never had one before)..... all new cabinets & more of them. On the opposite side of the dining room will be more cabinets /pantry that'll match the kitchen cabinets - officially making it one big kitchen. I'm excited!! But believe me...totally understand what you're going thru!! I can't show you picts. I have a file of our current designs..... (email me if you'd like to look at the design drawings jandy@lieblweb.com

Thank you for the replies. I will upload a few pictures later tonight or early tomorrow morning. I'll also search for the open layout.

Somewhere I saw pic where kitchen was totally open to dining, but pocket doors allowed you to close kitchen away when you wanted.

I know that feel. We removed the wall inbetween the kitchen and dining too. We'll install a complete new kitchen. Sorry, no 'new' pictures yet, we're still working on it (doing a complete house gut&reno).

If you watch any TV..... There are lots of Home Improvement / Renovation type shows & Home Buying Shows that are fun to watch. We watch a lot of them. The OPEN kitchen concept is BIG right now.. Everyone wants one (in the shows anyway). Shows to watch: "Love it or List it", "Property Virgins" "Kitchen Crashers" "House Hunters" and many more. You can see a lot of good and a lot of 'not so good' ideas in these shows.

Floor plan and photos would be helpful.

I don't know how this is gonna look...had to photoshop it a bit. This is directly from our kitchen design folks. Pardon the chicken scratch. The BLACK solid bars are where the wall is.....the wall we are knocking down.
http://www.lieblweb.com/Temporary/kitchenlayout.bmp

Assuming this is the new one, how about plumbing and such? Are they in the same place?

Ours.... sink is staying where it is, so that stays intact. We need to run a water line for our refrigerator ice maker (easy to do). Since our oven is changing position - they need to install new hood/exhaust to the outside. In our case - we are converting to dual fuel Range. We currently run propane as our secondary heat source in the house, so all they need to do is run extra gas lines to where the range will be. They're upgrading the electrical system /wiring (for code purposes) and will be installing new electrical outlets in the island and new & more lighting thru-out.