I see you are only asking about the kitchen, but I'll suggest the entire plan needs work.

Tell us about your building site (general location) and how the house will sit on it (where is north). It's unclear where the front, and front door are.

What's upstairs and down?

Who will live there?

Is this a DIY plan?

The latest rendering

What you show is a floor plan, a rendering is like a picture.

Thanks for the reply. Disregard the "rendering" term, I'm new to this....floor plan only at this point. This is a DIY plan inspired by a couple of other internet plans. Location is northern Maine for a family of 4. This floor plan is just the main floor, there will be a walkout basement as well with 2 additional bedrooms and 1 bath there. The current floor plan lines up with a compass, so top is North, bottom is South etc. The difficulty of the lot is that there is a slope from SW to NE and the road is north of the house (running parallel to the length of the home). Driveway will be approaching from the NW so the "main entrance" will be the "covered entry" location and double as the family entrance from the garage. I'm not a fan of what I term "the pointless front door" that rarely gets used. Trying to keep square footage to a minimum here.

Is there room for a mud room to dump the boots etc or are you planning to enter from basement with coats, etc? Having lived in Maine, Vit and now southern NE.. a mud room is a welcome addition.

That would be the plan with the “breezeway” entrance from the garage

The house seems to open up to the north side which will be darker and colder during the winter.

Are you avoiding something to the south?

Are you surrounded by trees?

Are you constrained by the size or shape of your buildable area on the lot?

The term "breezeway" commonly refers to a roofed, open passage connecting buildings or parts of a building. What you have is an entry/mudroom.

^ agree the pantry and master bath take away a lot of opportunities for southern facing windows

but no, I don't think the kitchen is too small - seems like you have nice workspace and then plenty of storage with the pantry

eta - I think those closet doors are going to cause issues with getting to the bath - are you all definite bathers? Meaning you already bathe regularly? if not, and the bath is just a nice to have, I'd remove it and add more closet space

That was my hope of have a cathedral ceiling to the south as well to have several windows in the dining room. The lot is open field with trees to the west. The reason for opening up the north is for the view to the north/northeast (see photo) My other thought was to expand the kitchen into the pantry area to add some additional windows along that wall.

I should clarify that it is a diy plan but I am working with a designer to put my thoughts on paper.

How big is the lot? Based on the plan I assumed a small city lot that needed to be compact with garage sticking out front. But this picture makes me think otherwise….

The buildable part of the lot is a little under an acre. Overall 10 acres, but there are some steep parts and wooded sections. I am working with a designer, but the project is moving a little slower than I had hoped and wanted to open up ideas from others.

If you have an acre there is zero reason the house should look like this. It is not remotely suitable for the lot or the size of space you have. You absolutely can have a smaller footprint but please scrap this and get one that works for your lot and makes sense. Work with someone who can make something special for your amazing view and location.

May I ask why you say that or what you would change? The slope to the lot does make the planning a little challenging. It’s not a flat 1 acre.

Garage facing forward and the entire house being built like it is on a narrow lot so is long and skinny vs playing up to the beautiful view and natural landscape.

I don't think I've seen a plan here yet that wouldn't benefit from being put on Silly Putty and st r e t t t c h ed out.

Here there is the fundamental restriction of sandwiching the living area between the garage and the bedroom wing - as opposed to having it on a nice corner with views and ventilation out two sides. It's ubiquitous modern design, and very, very hard to do well.

For reference, this is the online plan we’re mimicking. Garage needs to be facing the west due to the slope of the land.

Why would you mimic a plan. Design and build a home for four site.

Not suggesting this as a complete plan, only showing how you might arrange the public spaces.

I'd try to get the primary away from over the bedrooms below, and buffered from the main part of the house.

A good designer/architect is trained/experienced in working with your requirements and building site to develop a plan. It's what they do.

It's one click for the person that did the plan to generate perspectives, both inside and out.

Thank you @PPF

One option for enlarging the kitchen within this plan is a two-step process. I'd flip the pantry and laundry retaining the laundry door as the pantry entrance. Step two is to reduce the width of that combo by putting everything in the laundry on one wall. You'll gain 2-3 feet of kitchen depth adding counter to the sink run. The sink will most likely be a smaller single bowl 27" is more than adequate. All lowers to be wide drawer base cabs.

When you stretch out the living/dining room by turning it as above, make it wider. as wide as the segment to the left and still as long. That's a great room.

If you are building new forget those vaulted ceilings they honestly have more issues than pluses The heating and cooling are a PITA sound gets distorted and even worse when you go from that to a normal height ceiling. IMO a house where the bedroom you use for maybe 8 hrs a day is 3 x the size of the kitchen where the space is used much more , just makes no sense yo me. But only you know what you need in a kitchen so a good kitchen designer right now will be your best friend . For mw that kitchen belongs in a tiny aprtment in Paris .Your pantry is almost as big as the kitchen . You need real help before one thing is done .I see many things that would make me crazy so get some real help with a good interior designer and many meetings before on thing is done , The use of space is all wrong IMO . I do not even see a place to sit in that monster bedroom so how much time do you spend there honestly. The walk from the car to the pantry is bad. At most you will have 3 ' to work in the kitchen already just bad planning . Right now it is just on paper so fix it

Get an architect at the site.

Get past the idea of confining a kitchen to a ceiling height in an adjacent space.

Yes, the kitchen is too small , especially as it relates to other spaces ) office, primary bed/bath.

You don't begin a home from someone else's site and plan.

You begin from your site, to create YOUR house.

Not a good plan here, in any way, and I would encourage you to start over: ) With an architect and a clearly defined wish list of must have, would be nice to have: )

Small kitchens can be wonderfully efficient places to cook. And, with a pantry that size, you don't need to worry about having enough storage space. The fridge on the end allows people to grab snacks without being in the cook's way. AND STILL, once you have a good architect or designer on board, this could all change.

I'm not a fan of the dropped ceiling over the kitchen. It feels confining, arbitrary, and a bit dated. Why not give it the vertical openess and spaciousness that the other rooms have?

The main reason was noise control. I’m not certain if that is a valid concern. There seems to be two camps on have a dropped ceiling over a kitchen.

Noise travels in open concept. I doubt a dropped ceiling will stop that.

I'm confused about the stairs in the garage. Where do they go? It does not appear that the stairs going down can actually get to the basement, and living space below the garage is a huge NO, for a variety of reasons. You don't have a second floor, so why are there stairs going up?

If this is an artifact from the design that you are copying, and your "designer" didn't catch it, then they are not helping you very much.

You have a sliding door off the living room, which implies a deck. Do you ever grill? Take it from me, carrying a plate of food from the kitchen, across the living room to the deck, and back to the dining table is far from ideal. Our current house has this situation because it's a duplex, and we only have 2 outside walls to work with. I certainly would not intentionally design that way.

I agree with Nicole that a family of 4 in Maine needs plenty of room at the entry to put on coats and boots, to store mittens and hats. Your entry is pretty tight. Our last house had an 8'x8' foyer, and it was pretty cozy when we all came home at once.

Trying to tweak an existing plan to suit your specific needs is not going to give you a house that lives well for your family. Consider how you live, what a typical day looks like, and make a list of the things you need, the things you want, and the things you really don't want. A good architect will marry those lists to your lot to give you a design that looks great, takes advantage of the views, and lives well.

OP said there are two bedrooms and a washroom upstairs I believe as well as a walkout basement

Two bedrooms in the walkout basement. The stairs next to the office go to the basement, but with the comments this will need to be rearranged. The stairs in the garage are going up to the attic and also a set down to the basement that is beneath the garage (suspended garage floor). No living space under the garage, this is for wood storage that will be the primary heat source.

I would agree with your assessment that the Kitchen feels small. I would add that the Dining is too big. And that the Kitchen island extending into the cathedral space is uncomfortable for it's users. Then, I would add that the entry path is unremarkable, going past the Laundry and back of Kitchen to the back of Living. Whilst the stairs are blocking the Kitchen from having part of that spectacular view.

I read between the lines, when someone says "trying to keep square footage to a minimum," usually means they are using $/SF prices and have a strict (strict=low in comparison to surrounding homes) budget. I would counter that good design for the site, your family, and value received for the intensive endeavor of building a house is not restricted by a cost - it can be present for any cost value.

Oh my, heating your house with wood adds a whole new level of complexity!

My brother in Wisconsin heated his home with wood - he had lots of wooded property, so he cut his own, for several years. But the hassle eventually became too much - they had to get someone to stoke the furnace if they went away for the weekend, and cutting his own wood became more time and effort than he was willing to commit. He switched to a propane furnace. He had a boiler house separate from the main house.

I sure wouldn't want to haul cords of wood into a basement! Are you planning on a boiler or a furnace? Will it also be under the garage?

The kitchen's plenty big enough -- the problem is that it has so many "interruptions" to the work space.

Thoughts:

- With such a large pantry (love it), you don't need a lot of cabinets.

- This kitchen's problem is that it's disjointed /has too many openings.

- Open a door between the laundry and pantry. This will shorten the trip carrying groceries in and will give you better circulation. Consider a pocket door instead of a hinged door into this space.

- What's up with that set of stairs in the garage? If they weren't there, you could have a pass-through between the garage and pantry, and it'd be super-easy to "set things through" instead of carrying them into the house.

- I'd make the island and the sink cabinetry into an L-shape. This'll give you a good bit more cabinet storage, and you didn't need that open space anyway.

- Where will your gabage sit /what's the pathway to take garbage out? With a kitchen in the middle of the house, you probably will have a lengthy pathway -- and at some point a bag's going to leak, and you'll have a mess to clean.

Other thoughts about the house:

- I hear what you're saying about the front door, but I don't agree. At all. The front door doesn't need to be large and ostentacious, but you do need one.

- That is not a breezeway.

- Stairs are very costly (both in terms of money and space), and you're looking at two sets.

- Laundries -- well, dryers -- need to be on exterior walls. This makes them cheaper to build and more fire-safe. I'd consider flip-flopping the pantry and laundry. This is not a small thing.

- The living room looks cramped. The cathedral ceiling will make it feel larger / won't give it the square footage it needs. Cathedral ceilings don't have to be unweildy and expensive to heat /cool -- you can go with a modest vault /doesn't have to be super tall.

- In fact, all the public spaces look cramped, while the bedroom has more floorspace than is needed. Do you want to prioritize the bedroom /bathroom?

- A bay window would open up the dining room.

- The bathroom has so much empty floor space, while the closets are rather small. The bathroom vanity, as shown, will have no drawer space /no storage space -- and that matters much more than duplicate sinks. You really have no storage space in this bathroom.

Indoor boiler under the garage. Drop hole in the garage area to dump wood. That’s how I grew up and it worked quite well. That’s the least of my worries honestly. That’s the way of life in northern Maine. Once I’m too old to do it, pellet boiler it is. There will be oil back up if we’re away and for transition seasons.

ANY thread like this among the many others so similar, is to ask what you want to receive in feedback: The answers you may need, or.... those you'd like to hear.

No matter how much pantry you give a kitchen space, they also tend to be a gathering space. A case of how many cooks, how many helpers.

A ten foot ceiling everywhere is a whole lot of sky view. .....and a FLUSH to cabinet front soffit in the kitchen perimeter is not a deal breaker for a great looking kitchen......and a far less inhibiting divining line of purpose.

Think of long term and short term and the cost of an architect , and the advantages of a tailored to you, GREAT plan for the site, as payback and dividends over time. Rarely to be regretted.

I guess this all begs the question of what if anything are you willing to change? If you aren’t open to any changes to the plan other than kitchen say so and clearly. If you are open to more say that as well.

You cannot have a "drop door" in the garage. The garage has to be fire separated from the rest of the house. Everything about this idea, not just the plan, is poor design. You were over budget with this, before you starting hacking to death a bad plan to "adapt" it. Unless you are going to provide 100% of the labor to build this, you need to go back to the drawing board, and better match the budget with the home that fits the site. And one that doesn't scorn creature comforts like proper indoor heating.

The kitchen is the LEAST of the problems. The whole concept is flawed.

A kitchen’s functionality is determined less by its square footage and more by how efficiently the space is planned. The key elements, sink, stove, and refrigerator, should follow an ergonomic work triangle, which minimizes unnecessary movement while cooking. Adequate counter space around these zones is essential for prep and cleanup. Clearance between islands and perimeter cabinets should ideally be 42-48 inches to allow two people to work comfortably without congestion.

Storage depth, appliance placement, and walkway width matter just as much as room size. If your floor plan shows good workflow, uninterrupted prep surfaces, and logical traffic patterns that don’t intersect with cooking areas, then even a moderately sized kitchen can feel spacious. On the other hand, a large kitchen with poorly planned circulation or oversized features can feel cramped. Evaluating proportions, flow, and functional zones will tell you far more about how the kitchen will perform than the raw dimensions alone.

Well said Tejjy. Now we wait for the OP or not as the case may be Sometimes it seems the answers are not what they want so they just go away.

Back to the drawing board folks.

^^^ That is the best Idea you've had: )

Agreed! This is really great to be willing to hear it can be much better and be okay with it. Good luck!

Since you're in the "idea" stage, I recommend you read some of the books by Sarah Susanka. It's not about tiny houses, more about making the space work efficiently. https://susanka.com/not-so-big-house/

Also A Pattern Language. Probably only a few chapters are relevant to you but it's a wonderful idea-generating read. It talks about things that make a home better to live in. Family spaces vs couple spaces in a home. Framing a view. I think you'll find it interesting. Here's a link to a free pdf of the book. https://arl.human.cornell.edu/linked%20docs/Alexander_A_Pattern_Language.pdf

Agree on the Susanka books, they are gold

Maine is beautiful! You are so lucky. Reality is its not like the rest of the US, or even the rest of new england. We have family proprty, but downstate so its a little different even than whereyou are.

One very important thing to get figured out first is where your septic, leach field and well will be, that will also determine placement. Also, your builing window is very limited because of the five seasons in Maine. (falllll, winterrrrrr, muddddd, spr. sum)

I know of more than a few that gave built up there. A suggestion might be a modular home, there are many options to choose from based in Maine. There are perhaps 10 of them on Us1 surrounding portlnd to nh border.

(not mobile, modular)

Indoor boiler under the garage. Drop hole in the garage area to dump wood.

This Southern girl doesn't have the slightest idea what that means.

A kitchen’s functionality is determined less by its square footage and more by how efficiently the space is planned.

100% true.

No matter how much pantry you give a kitchen space, they also tend to be a gathering space.

My husband and I both cook, but we both hate anyone -- including each other -- in our space. I like the concept you have -- an island keeping people O.U.T., while allowing them to hover around the edges.

Take a look at Whitten Architects. They have created amazing houses of varying sizes and styles with careful consideration of the site and homeowner needs. If nothing else, there is good inspiration in their designs. We briefly considered building new, years ago and not anywhere near Maine, and I was obsessed with the Dash Landing Farmhouse in Freeport Maine that they built.

I’ve found that a kitchen that size can work really well if you keep the traffic paths clear and let the island do the heavy lifting. Mock it out with tape on the floor to see how it feels in real life. Sometimes shifting the pantry door or trimming the island a bit makes the whole space breathe. I’ve picked up layout tricks from sites like emersonproservices.com even though they focus on home upkeep.

What is the distance between the ranger/counters and the island. Will suggest that it be 4'-0" minimum.