Hi Karen/OnePlan, Thanks for the responses - I thought nobody loved me :-( Also, thanks for reassuring me. I want the kitchen to be as near to perfect as possible as this is my one and only chance. Craig

@Damian Farrell, the induction hob I've had since... what.. July or August? I think? Not that long. Took a while to get used to it, having always cooked on gas. Advantages: very quick, easy to clean, you can let it automatically turn off after a certain time. Disadvantages: sometimes the pans make annoying noises, has something to do with the resonance of the magnetic field I think? I don't know. But it can be a bit annoying. Make:Schott-Ceran, but the downdraft is from a Dutch company called Airo Design. Don't think they export to other countries. Anyway, almost every company does them now. Bora gets good reviews, Miele, Siemens... The videos on youtube show that the steam goes down and you think, yeah... right... But it really does go down. It works just as good, if not better than a regular one that is over the hob. I'm happy with it.

Thank-you very much for the comments. I hope it will be a great space, but playing around with it and changing the design at the last minute is getting a bit stressful! This is the design that the build company showed us initially - just their initial thought as it how it would look. I found feeling the area where they had positioned the fridge/freezer very tricky. We want a free-standing french larder style fridge and the doors and level of matching with the rest of the units didn't seem like a good fit. The support pillar for the steel that crosses the island in the attachment below has also been a real annoyance. It sticks out 23cm, so it can only really go through empty-ish cupboards. Clearly anything to the left of that steel is difficult to vent. On the design in my intitial post, I was intending to have a dropped ceiling element that stretched just beyond the steel. This would let me have a powerful extractor and exit the flew onto the flat room (hidden by the drop ceiling 'box'). I like the idea you describe of a full wall of units, then island, then table. I guess Jonathan's proposal is similar to that. While I love the efficiency of the "4 double door" hideaway I just don't like the aesthetic, so will need to think about something else. Bringing it back to what we need... Utility room: enough to stash the washing machine, store the vacuum cleaner and hang a few clothes. No need for a sink. Free Standing, 90cm wide fridge, nicely framed either by wall of kitchen units. Waist height oven with an additional "top oven / grill (broiler)" - so at least one full height column. Good size kitchen island with at least two seats. Approx 90cm induction hob, plus a gas domino hob. Powerful, externally venting extractor over hob. I'm relatively open to moving the kitchen/living area to wherever it works best. I'm also not desperate to have the hob on the island (but that would be nice). As far as I know, the builders haven't done anything that can't be easily adjusted at this stage - but I think that will change in a couple of days - and they are planning for the kitchen to be in the old part of the house. As for rooflights - I thought, perhaps wrongly, that it would be light enough with the big bifold doors. It is an east facing room, and the old room had some sliding paitio doors and it felt bright enough. So I have left roof lights out on the basis that - but I'm also concerned about noise. (Cheaper too!). The biggest window we can gave without incurring significantly more cost is 1800mm x 1000mm - I'm minded to be 2 or 3 of these in that middle section. Thanks!

Mine was an 800 before I removed the glass - the main fan section is smaller of course so I presume that it’s the actual canopy that makes the difference ie if the extractor canopy is 800 with an 800 hob then most of the steam that rises, should hit the top of the canopy and be drawn towards the extractor. Even though we removed the glass on ours, it will be set into a suspended wood canopy so in effect, the steam should do the same thing. I’m told induction hobs are super steamy, ha ha. We got a Neff extractor which is also v quiet so hoping it does the trick!