The sink in the island is the way to go here. As Lampert Dias mentioned above, your island can be larger than drawn. I prefer the sink and the breakfast bar at the same height as pictured above, but some people like to step the bar side up to protect it from the sink. It is an option. You can put the pantry and refrigerator on either side of the wall or even split them up and flank the wall as long as the refrigerator door can open. I would take the opportunity for more storage or display and put a cabinet on the wall behind the breakfast bar. Consider using a shallower cabinet there like 17" deep. It could be like a "china" cabinet display piece or more pantry storage if needed.

I see what you mean, It's a good idea in theory, however, practically, I don't think it's going to work, and you will end up ruining the nicest room in the house. There are no walls that remain unbroken by doors or windows, so where are you going to put units and unbroken worktop space. They can't go on the left as there are three doors. There's a door on the right, which although you could put a unit and a bit of worktop back right, it wouldn't be very big, and the biggest run of wall goes straight down to the glass doors, so you probably can't and wouldn't want to go straight up to them. You could move the door into the hallway from the front end to the bottom end by the patio doors and this would give you a better run of wall. If you put an island in the middle, 5' into the room to give yourself room to walk in and gain more worktop, it'll only leave you with around 6' at the other end for a dining space. However, i'd still advise getting a kitchen planner onboard before you start, as i'm not convinced the room is big enough to achieve what you want with the available wall space, and it stands a good chance of spoiling a very nice and elegant entrance to a house. The other big problem is the plumbing, there isn't any currently in that room, so you'll need to dig up the floor for drainage and almost definately that of either the utility or one of the bathrooms! I vote for keeping the house exactly as it is!

In the main I agree with Patricia. I would move the dining table to the living area, move the living area to the kids room, move the island a little more to the right so it is just a little more over than the width of the entrance walkway, at the moment it is more to the left and almost interrupts the entry flow enough to keep catching your self on the edge, with the table moved it will allow this, plus there may be enough room for more storage on the right hand wall decorative or practical and naturally shallower than standard depth, consider what it would be used for then you can make an informed decision on depth. The island sink and bin are not far from the tall unit pantry and fridge, so no I don't think they are to far away, whatever you get from these places are to be opened probably by the sink or bin, or opened to eat from the packaging. Also why would you have a log burner and an aga in the same room unless your aga is an electric one? They both give of tremendous heat, an aga is constant and unless you have planned for other oven types it will be year round so summer as well, as Patricia mentioned bare in mind how the sun transits your house, where it's position is when you will be in these areas which I'm guessing will be most of the time. I know plenty of people who gave had " improvements revamps etc" to their kitchen dining living spaces with plenty of regrets, loads of glass to bring the outside in, underfloor heating and an aga, the underfloor heating is switched off you can't zone it to where you want it, and the aga gives of to much heat with the glass combined, all the hard surfaces, no acoustics were considered by the so called "architects" sound is a problem too, something else to consider, someone else had to have some of their new kitchen change to make room for an air conditioning unit because of the heat, this is very expensive to run constantly, summers are almost unbearable, these things also affect materials being used such as leather and wood drying out and cracking/splitting. I hope this has been helpful. Kind regards Barbara

Hi We are lucky to have bought a new house It is very large which we didn’t necessarily want but in great location and properties very hard to come by There are sea views from upstairs What we really want is to have better flow down stairs and upstairs Downstairs takes priority over upstairs Any suggestions welcome We are a family of five I was thinking of opening up the kitchen to sitting room The Back is south west facing which is good The two upstairs offices are not currently used or even plastered They cannot be accessed from upstairs and actually that is ok for now as you can see space is not an issue other that maybe zoning off some so we don’t have to maintain as much My husband also currently works from home and we have a lot of visitors so downstairs bedroom quite handy Sorry for lack punctuation Phone broken Any suggestion on improving layout or flow are more than welcome and appreciated Thanks