This is my kitchen plan. The everyday dishes will live to the left of the fridge. They can be unloaded from the dishwasher and put away without have to move. There will be one trash can on a pullout to the left of the sink. Drawers flank either side of the range. An above the range speedoven will be over the short counter by the door. To the right of the fridge will be pullout pantry shelves. The butler pantry will also serve as a wet bar

We are getting bids as I type. Can't wait to break ground

Bill

You do have to give up some efficiency to have room for others... enough workspace and traffic flow. It helps not to have traffic streaming through from one place to another... Not too many doors and paths to work around. For family participation, zones work better than the old work triangle...With each task area, rather than the whole kitchen, having it's own triangle or other efficient configuration.

I designed our house for our family, pretty much giving the kitchen top priority. I wanted room for everyone who wanted or needed to to be able to work together with as little space or traffic conflict as possible. We have 8 kids, 7 at home right now... Probably 3 of them who cook or bake almost as much as I do. This layout has worked great for us:

Here is a link that might be useful: More on how our zones and work paths work

My friend built a house a few years ago and could have any kitchen she wanted. Hers is very functional. It's a U shape with a large, almost square island in the middle. Stools are on the far end of the island, so no one is ever in her way when she's cooking. On one wall she has sink and DW, center wall has cooktop, double oven is set diagonally in the corner, then a really big frig on the third side. In between the appliances are cupboards, the wall with the sinks has lots of display cupboards for glasses and crystal, there's a neighboring room with another frig and shelves for her pantry. Her dishes and pots are in drawers in the island. It's big, but not huge, so it's pretty efficient. All the prep is on the center island and everything is just an aisle away from the island - like a gallery kitchen that has been shaped into a U. The pantry is huge for a pantry, but you don't have to walk around it while you're cooking. It's very well done.

Some components for a more than one together kitchen are main work areas are not included in a primary traffic lane, cook and wash zones are multi-use multi-access and work areas when in use do not impede movement of others around the space- like eddies in a stream.

mamattorney, what aisle width is your kitchen now? How long is the aisle? Outside the kitchen, what are the areas at the end of the aisle?

The length of each side of the counters is 13ft 4in, the majority of the aisle is 41in, with 44in where the desk height counter is and 34in where the fridge is.

One end is the dining room (our only eating area) and the other is the back door and entrance to the basement plus passage to the rest of the house. I actually like the kitchen, it's just cramped.

Here are some photos I hope they aren't too big:

Have you considered keeping some components of the galley layout you love, without the confining walls? So, sink wall at a wall of windows made longer to accommodate a pull out trash cabinet and an extra DW if you need one, with the cooking wall just opposite, connected to a beautiful that offers seating and possibly a prep sink. You can move the fridge to the end of the row, or opposite the island, and move the desk area out of there completely. Here's an image that gives you the idea. In this case the sink is in the island.

it's a good layout. You already said it, in your first post. All those reasons were right. In addition, the kitchen's open-endedness at one end is good. (Imagine if the kitchen were enclosed between four walls.) You have two sinks. Your microwave is off the counter. Do you have lighting over the counter? Under the upper cabinets.

Working against the idea of renovating is the fact that this kitchen is so good to start with. It's in great condition. Its layout is good. I'll suggest a partial improvement, in two steps.

First level improvement:
1. On your drawer fronts replace all those clothes-catching knobby pulls with slim handles that have rounded corners. Same for the cabinet doors. People won't feel comfortable brushing past the knobs, but they will more likely feel comfortable brushing up close to slim round-end handles.
2. Add more task lighting. The ceiling pot circuits can be used to feed a number of modern low-wattage spotlights. The more light there is in one specific area, the more you feel it's a separate workspace, and the less likely it is that you feel hemmed in or "in a meaningless place". The center-ceiling lights are in the wrong place. Light needs to be on each side, not in the middle.
3. Get the Fridge and DW to play nicer together. Get a Dishdrawer dishwasher. Get the fridge to sit deeper in its space. First pull the fridge out, measure everything protruding, look see how many inches empty space you have currently behind the fridge, and poke holes in the wall behind the fridge to figure out how many inches you can gain by removing a stud or two and thereby recessing the fridge in its own special nook in the wall. Gardenweb forums have detailed this often. ("Recessing a fridge"). Positioning the fridge several inches deeper back gives you a working aisle, wide enough for people to pass each other without asking permission. A huge improvement. The new DW, being drawers, is functional when any one drawer is pulled out several inches and only that. Both improvements together ensure that this quarter of the kitchen does not feel as seriously hemmed in as it does now.

Next stage improvement:
Carefully remove the base cabinets under the cooktop, cut a couple inches off the back end, and re-install. The counter will overhang more than now. This increases space inside the current footprint, even with the countertop remaining the same depth. It gives more room for more people in the aisle. The gain in useable space is significant when you get more inches for leg room. Right now the distance knob-to-knob (currently about 42" or 43" ) is acceptable but barely. So, increase it by inches. And if you replace the knobs with round-end pulls you already have another little space gain. If you have the money, the supervisory time, and the appropriate endurance for dust and mess, replace your base cabinets and counter. All drawers everywhere (standard size 19.5" deep drawer glides) in Frameless cabinets, standard size frameless cabinets but cut down to 21" depth. Ikeafans and Gardenweb forums have detailed this. To get more useable countertop space, consider one continuous countertop on the RHS of the cooktop. Large expanses of continuous countertop are good. When well lit, they become central. If you replace the longest countertop, you can undermount the sinks.

Hth

I would say getting fridge and range/cooktop on the same wall across from an island with a prep sink is ideal. If the island is rectangular and not square, the long side of the island should face the range. The cleanup sink, DW and dish storage should be on a separate wall.

There are tweaks to this of course that depend on whether you have room for a U + island vs an L + island, if you will have a range vs. a cooktop + wall oven(s), if you practice mise en place, if you make primarily cooktop meals vs. cooktop to oven meals vs you bake a lot, if you need or want a separate beverage/snack center, how many cooks you have.. the list goes on. There is a thread called "New to Kitchens" that has a list of what information needs to be thought about in a layout. I would fill that out and then ask for help here.

to answer our question, yes...mine! For me, that is.

I mean that maximizing efficiency given the space you have necessarily means including how you use your kitchen which is a very individual thing. So what works for one may not work for another.

Mamattorney - We are loving our new kitchen - we didn't knock out any walls but reconfigured it.

We have an L shaped run and then across the kitchen is our bake zone

Here is the L-shaped area - Cooking zone, cleaning zone, prep and serving zones - Everything pops out of the DW (which is on the left of the sink) and goes into the drawers and cabinets to the right of the sink area

Bake zone (and you can see the end of the L and proximity to the fridge for baking, prep, and serving (note the fridge is not back home in this picture but you can see the "hole") - The fridge is still in the dining room. There are 2 doors in the kitchen - one goes to the dining room and the other goes to the entryway/foyer. There is a 3rd door that goes to the pantry.

Total width is 11 feet across
Total length of the kitchen is 14.5 feet

There is an open sun room (~11x11) at the opposite end of the kitchen.

So far, loving everything -
Things I might have done differently -
-If the kitchen was a bit bigger - a prep sink
-Wanted the trash/recycle closer to the sink/DW but in order to have a full sized version - only fit to the left of the cooktop - NBD -

Favorite items
-Faucet
-Pull out pantry to the left of the fridge
-Drawers, drawers, drawers
-Bench and storage caves (his and hers) in the sunroom
-Pocket door with occupancy sensor light to the pantry

Least favorite item
-The worthless expensive knife block from the cabinet maker.

Happy planning!

PS - is that Jeffrey Court backsplash?

Part of the reason people remodel is because their kitchen doesn't suit their life or what they cook. What would be an ideal layout for me, isn't going to be the ideal layout for you. Our family and economic makeups are different. Our homes are different and also regional costs. Appliances vary a lot in both space needs and money.

People's needs for space differ and what they will put up with differs. Some people want a baking center or large mixer and some people don't. Some people have substantial vegetable gardens - they can and freeze in large or small batches and have arms full of veg coming in from the garden.
Some people have only a tomato plant in a pot.

So, I think the answer is no - there's not one size fits all.

That was a great description why there is no ideal shape size or layout.

mamattorney, if you knew which wall would be the one that would get the add on, people could comment more wisely about your layout options. You would have to post a whole house layout.

I think some reasons why you feel it's narrow are that one segment of it truly IS narrow, another segment is not practical for two prep people because there isn't any one large continuous stretch of countertop, and thirdly there is countertop clutter that could be stored in huge deep wide drawers if you had hug deep wide drawers.

My kitchen is similar to yours in many ways. I also have one end open and one end closed like yours. As you said in your first post, it is SO efficient. I would never trade it for an L or a U shape. My kitchen is smaller than yours but I have worked with others successfully in it. Remember that you can have two cutlery drawers, two small trash bins, two of anything! Different from your kitchen, I have no uppers on one of the two walls (makes it feel roomy), and ginormous drawers so I can declutter anytime I wish to. I have more than 50 feet worth of drawers in terms of width, spread out over about 22 drawers (some are deep drawers and some are shallow drawers). The advantage of frameless cabinets is that you get a lot more space in the drawers. When I renovated I quadrupled my space in my base cabinets because of this, I mean because drawers in frameless cabinets are SO efficient compared to storing things on a shelf in the base cabinet and accessing it by stooping down to grab something behind a cabinet door, often in the dark and on your knees or on all fours.

I would say the best layouts have a lot of prep space by the range/cooktop and water nearby. Whether this is a prep sink and island across from the range/cooktop...or a sink on the other end of the prep space, depends on the kitchen. The fridge should be close by (no barrier island) and the baking area should have plenty of storage, whether there's a separate oven area or not...and a pantry is nice, too!

Lots of different layouts are possible, but that's what I usually see in the best ones. Hope that helps :)

Thanks for all the great ideas and comments - our possible plan is to build on to the back of the house, which is the side with the windows and the sinks. We're looking to add a kitchen based eating area and a first floor family room/great room, and ideally a bedroom and a mudroom as well.

In casual conversation with a neighbor who is an architect, he told us the the remodel/addition may cost upwards of $200K. We'll never make it up in resale value, so it's one of those things that we need to decide. Is this our forever, forever home or should we seriously consider moving within the neighborhood to a house that has these things. It's a big decision.

First, I would look at houses in your neighborhood, to see what's available. Is there anything that you like? If so, then find out what your house would realistically sell for, subtracting closing costs and then see if it makes sense. Moving would be easier (if the house sells quickly) and you wouldn't have the lost equity.

Is there anything about your current home, besides the neighborhood, that you love? Is the yard or view much nicer than other homes in the area? If not, I'd think about moving over remodeling...especially with that much of an addition. But, you won't know until you do your research. Best of luck with your decision :)

We added an 8' x 14' addition to our kitchen. Although not a big addition it has completely changed the feel of the house. We now have a large island and lots of windows and light. It was no where near $200k (closer to $60-70K range but we didn't need new appliances). Sometimes a small addition can make a big difference. We did not use an architect but spent alot of time on this forum and looking at Houzz. I don't have very good photos yet.

I forgot to say that with the addition, the kitchen is now 20' x 14' with a 8' x 4' island plus an eat in kitchen area. We now have room for large gatherings and it is just nice having an island in the kitchen. It has become a hang out place which might be nice for your family of five. My boys are teenagers and you are right about them getting bigger and bigger...then you add their friends. I wish we could have done it earlier.