Nice! Looks like a fun project. I would rotate the island and then put the prep sink across from the fridge, being sure to leave at least 1' of counter space on the side of the sink...otherwise its usefulness diminishes a lot. That would give you seating for 3 on the opposite side of the island. You have room to curve it if you want and gain seating for 4 instead.

Thanks for confirming my feeling, Annie Annie. Then, on the narrow end of island close to the pantry, I think I’ll build in a dog feeding station similar to what I have right now.

I’m thinking it may be better if the long side of island is parallel to the stove.

I think between the space on either side of the range, and the short end of the island, you are good. So that would not drive my decision about island orientation.

I added the island prep sink because the distance from fridge to sink is far, even though I’m not crazy about them.

I don't like island prep sinks either, but I assume you have exhausted other options. I have 3 sinks and 90% of the time use one.

Have fun with your project.

This project has been and will continue to be protracted. Not on Sue time. Do not share this with anyone, but my husband plans to gc (gasps of horror). he is smarter than the average saturday warrior so I’m not worried so much about gaffs as living with sawdust from now til the end of time. I have a visceral negative reaction to sawdust odor.

Acting as gc also means having access to workers. Some say it is easier for a professional gc to get workers in a timely manner, because of relationships both existing and potential for future relationships.

Yup, am taking this likely source of frustration into account.

Not that it will necessarily create a smooth path but we do have existing relationship with roofer, guy who will do digging / grading, hvac, and will be working with known SIPS people instead of conventional framing. But we do anticipate slow progress and extra months of mud and dirt. Intentionally trading faster for less expensive.

Lisa, my husband is always is the gc. My joke is that he will be pulling up the lawn chair and watching every move. There can be many correct ways to do any one thing, but as the customer, you want it done your way.

Like your DH mine is knowledgeable in all aspects of renovation from ground up, including plumbing and electrical. How he knows these things is beyond me. Especially when he gives a pro an idea that they never thought of.

This sounds like an amazing project and once done you will enjoy for many years.

I agree with mtn - you have adequate prep space on either side of the stove so that should not influence island orientation.

I'm an outlier on prep sinks and unless a kitchen is ginormous I think they are not worth their real estate or plumbing considerations. In your space, I would not bother. An uninterrupted island for aesthetics and usefulness is worth far more - to me - YMMV.

One positive reason to have the prep sink where it is would be to have a handy place to drain liquids from cooking pots without having to carry them across the kitchen and in front of a door to the main sink. Just make sure to have a deep prep sink, not one of those shallow, tiny ones that look like a bar sink.

I have mixed feelings on prep sinks. I have one in two of my houses and one I use quite a bit more than the other one. The one that gets more use is mostly for rinsing and draining produce. I guess it has to do with the location of both sinks in the two kitchens. I don't think I'd have one where you have it in the drawing as it's not right near the fridge and it is pretty close to the other sink.

In the one kitchen remodel we did, we ended up having seating on three sides of our island and I loved that - much nicer sitting kind of across from someone rather than all lined up in a row. In your case I'd be inclined to have adjacent seating on two sides - the side facing the window and the side facing the range - maybe two seats in each space if there's room. On the end of the long side that doesn't have seating you'd have cabinetry and maybe the pet feeding spot since you'd have seating on that end. If you had this island arrangement and wanted the prep sink I'd put it in the middle of the end by the range.

I would also rotate the island, and not do a prep sink.

Have you considered not putting cabinets on the kitchen wall next to the pantry entrance, and doing a piece of furniture instead? Hutch, armoire, glass front/partial glass front, a unique piece, console with art above, closed bottom/open top. Options depending on what you would store there.

If I am looking at the measurements correctly, rotating the island will only give you a little bit of space on either side of the long ends of the island. You currently show 4’ 1/4” on one side and 4’8” on the other plus the 4’ allowed for the island. 12.8” minus 7’ leaves about 5.8’ total, so unless you shorten the island, I think it would look like you crowded it into that space. At least 3’ is recommended between the cabs and an island.

I could be looking at the wrong numbers, but i would leave it the way it is shown.

I‘ll reexamine what the aisle space would be if the island is rotated to i sure that it will be sufficient. Especially if there will be dining dogs in the aisle. Right now I climb over them. 🙂

A piece of furniture instead of cabs on that pantry wall is a nice idea that I hadn’t considered. Since I will have much more storage space than I currently do, there is plenty of flexibility and time (!) to find an attractive piece. And love the notion for a safely clean wall in the kitchen for art. A fun idea to think about.

Great! I like our kitchens to look less kitchen-y and more my style. I even hang art in closets.

Are you cabinets going to be custom? If so, I loved this drawer I had made at our last house: This side of the island housed this drawer (close to range to the right side of island) with other three drawers holding lesser used items. The other side had two cutlery drawers and four drawers used for dishes, glassware, and food storage containers (opposite of sink and DW). Actually the only doors were under the sink and it was suppose to be a pull-out as well. Having all drawers is awesome. This kitchen also had three pantries.

Outside, I noticed the aisle measurements too, and thought the island would need downsizing to accommodate the switch.

You haven't attracted the attention of any of the actual Pros on this site. You would do better posting in Design Dilemma or Home Decorating.

Architects are not kitchen designers. You might want to hire a kitchen designers time to review. They would moat likely be able to assist with sourcing as well.

Can you move that door to the porch? It creates a traffic path right through the kitchen work zone.

Move the fridge to the sink wall, following "ice, water, stone, fire" functionality. Your wouldn't need a prep sink if your fridge were not a mile away from the main sink!

So much of my cooking is sink to stove that I would have to have a sink in the island. Can you imagine draining pasta or vegetables by walking that distance to the main sink? I'd turn the island and do a full sized sink, DW and trash pullout there and eliminate the sink on the wall.

Have you considered putting the refrigerator on the left side of the sink wall? You could put a prep sink on the stove wall instead of on the island.

I like the island oriented as shown.

There is another door to the porch in the dining room, so this won’t be the main thoroughfare. This kitchen door will be convenient access for outdoor dining service and carrying coffee outside in the morning. That corner counter & cupboard area by the outside door may be where my mixer and coffee stuff live. Right now my Kitchenaid emerges from a cabinet when I use it and we don’t use an electric coffeemaker, so all of this will be stored out of sight.

Also, I do like the location of clean-up sink and dishwasher in relation to where dirty dishes will be coming from and where clean dishes and glasses will live.

The opposie end of the kitchen where the fridge & pantry are accesses a breezeway to the garage, so that will be the loading-in path. I like that the pantry and fridge are adjacent to each other.

I do need to carefully compare this most recent plan to the previous to see what else changed when the island was rotated 90 degrees.

I have designed a couple of commercial kitchens, have been following discussions here for years, and so while I will definitely get more experienced eyes on the cabinet layout when I get to that point, I greatly value what this group can suggest on layout!

bbstx, agreed that the prep sink as shown in this iteration makes little sense. I would like to figure out what I would have to change to rotate the island and have prep sink at tbe refrigerator end. If the cabinets on the pantry wall become some sort of furniture sideboard and I shrink the island down to 6’ I will see if the walkways are sufficient and a 6’ island w/ prep sink should be large enough work area (although 7’ is nicer).

The number of counter seats is less important; I’m fine with space for 2.

Is the Mudroom the main back entrance? It only has a dogwash and no closet, seating, or opportunity for storage other than wall hooks. Also, the large stair windows are lighting a Pantry wall and none in the main Mudroom.

Is the Pantry strictly supporting the Kitchen or general house storage too?

Does anything in the Dining Room affect the location or size of the opening to Kitchen?

Refrigerator placement is not only considered within the kitchen space, but also with respect to the main house as the refrigerator is used other than meal times.

All those affect island placement.

The mudroom entrance will be used if we park in the garage, which right now we do not or I intend to use it as the dog entrance to minimize the dirt they bring inside. The new kitchen is part of a sizeable addition which of course comes with lots of constraints. One constraint is that although the lot is 19 acres, the existing house is very close to a property line, so we are limited as to where we can add on. The adjacent property is 100 acres in land trust so we should never have close neighbors there.

Other entrances include a front door, 2 doors from the porch, and our current entry which we may continue to use when we do not park in the garage. I don’t envision heavy traffic thru the mudroom entry. I am very tired of drying dogs off at my front door and of cleaning my shower when a dog needs a bath.

The pantry will be mostly kitchen stuff. There are other closets for the vacuum, coats and such.

The opening to the kitchen from the dining room is currently a sliding glass door. The future dining room is currently our all-in-one great room (living, dining, large grand piano). Dining table and piano will stay.

The stairs go down to ground level area which can be built out to include 2 bedrooms, plus additional areas that were intended as mother in law space but won’t be used as that now.

The existing kitchen future is not determined. Architect’s suggestion is to enlarge the current primary bedroom and bath into this area.

My current house is small but open and bright. I do understand that the new dining area will not have as much natural light. The new living area faces south and is mostly windows. The new construction will have the same deep overhangs that our garage & apartment were built with and the light up there is perfect.

. There are just 2 of us living here but we are trying to build a house that is workable for other demographics.

I don't want to open a can of worms, my intention is always to bring things to light or allow the house to maximize what it can become. Sometimes, especially with Kitchens, the focus is on those details and the forest is missed for the trees.

I assume this may have a tall crawlspace under a portion of house, like is more common in GA or CA, because I think I see a stair in the garage down to there. If so the addition would connect to a conversion of that space and some more to build out in the future. This aligns with making a house for you while also for the general marketplace and your ROI.

Some comments about the concept, then:

- If a lower level is built out with prominent functions (secondary bedrooms, maybe a walk--out rec room), is it best to access in the "backhouse" through a dogwash? Is the stair design just "tetris-ed" back there as an afterthought?

- I understand you have a certain way of living, people adapt to houses. However, if you created a Mudroom to be the main "backhouse" entry instead of just a dogwash, where this backhouse entry is the heart of daily entry, wouldn't you then use it all the time? Right now, you have the secondary front entrance that leads to the empty Dining Area (possible Master takeover), wouldn't that be better in terms of overall circulation to be abandoned?

- The house looks to be very muddled with previous smaller additions and remodels. Often, you can use a big addition and remodel to fix that and clean up the concept. With that, the former Kitchen area is dead space. The Master and Laundry should be designed now, with your Kitchen, backhouse, and lower level, to account for all of this. It doesn't mean it has to all be built simultaneously, but designing it as a whole avoids the muddling you often get when you don't.

3onthetree, thanks for your thoughts. You read plans thoroughly!

The current house is a rectangle, 25’ x 50’.

I expect the mudroom entry will see little traffic because it will be kind of out of the way.

Guests will come in the foyer entry to living and dining area. I hope to park in garage and use mudroom.

The lower level will have separate entry and can be accessed via the inside stairs. Yes, it originates in the current crawlspace that will be excavated. Plus, the land falls off on that side making lower level full daylight construction possible.

Yeah, we do need to block out conversion of the current kitchen so it doesn’t stay a weird space forever.

The stairs in the garage at the very bottom of the plan lead to a self contained apartment with a separate entry.