More Kitchen Ideas

I've spent some time over the past few weeks using Google Sketchup to come up with some different designs for renovating my kitchen. I am pretty sure I want to extend the countertop toward the dining room and create a peninsula for a great cooking and entertaining space. To review here is how the kitchen looks now:

Part of the debate right now is whether to try and shift the "weight" of the kitchen away from one end and more towards the middle of the new space. Using Sketchup I made several different layouts to get a sense for how things would look as I moved the appliances around. The first layout keeps all the appliances in the same place and just adds the peninsula and an extra upper cabinet.

The next layout adds a dishwasher to the right of the sink, moves the refrigerator to the opposite side of the kitchen and puts a large pantry unit where the fridge is now. I like that the pulls the center of the kitchen closer to the peninsula but it might be an issue to have the fridge in the middle with less open space in front of it. This is layout #2.

Another potential design is to move the fridge truly to the middle of the kitchen by putting it to the right of the sink with the dishwasher and a "kitchen office" to the left of the sink and the stove on its own where it is currently located. At this point this seems like a poor option. It really breaks up the counter area and makes a fairly open space pretty cramped. This is number 3.

Learning from the last few designs I moved the appliances essentially to the original locations and reflected the upgrades I would make. I also added a vent hood to the stove. I really like this layout and think it makes good use of the space. This is layout 4.

One thing I don't love about the above layout is the elimination of the pantry. I think this would be a really nice addition to the kitchen and make it that much a better space to cook and entertain. The next two options add a pantry on the same side of the stove, with slightly different cabinet alignment around the stove. Lets call these layouts 5 and 6.

So there you have it! There are a couple other ideas that I haven't demonstrated, such as:

• Eliminatig the window to the right of the sink and adding lots more upper cabinets.
• Moving the sink to under the window closer to the middle of the overall space.
• Moving the stove top to the opposite wall and closer to the peninsula.
• Trying to add a double wall oven.
• Adding a prep sink near the peninsula.

Whatever you think of any of these ideas, layouts, or anything else I'd love to hear some suggestions.  I'm still not sure I'll tackle this project in this summer or even in 2012 but for now I'm enjoying learning the software and getting some inspiration together.  Perhaps I'll have some master bedroom designs in a few weeks and tackle that project first!