Hi Lil, I believe your original plan works much better than the revised version. While the notion of ideal working widths is great, the larger problem here is the post. I worked on a project very similar to this last year where a post could either be connect to, or separate from the island. What we found was that by separating the island the space between island and post became very awkward. It's not enough of a space to comfortably walk through or be seated at the island in front of. Instead of your room feeling open and generous in proportion, it is going to start to feel cramped and awkward. We have a kitchen in our showroom (Kitchen Studio Tauranga NZ) with a 6ft gap between bench and back wall and it works wonderfully. It allows someone to work at the sink and a second at the island with ease. Stick with the original plan. It will feel a lot more spacious, without compromising work flows.

i'm glad you're planning to reroute access to the garage: clumsy traffic pattern change a generous room into a big hallway and can't stop thinking about your kitchen..1. where you have narrow cabinets/shelves in the pantry...it's possible to have built in shelves inside the dividing wall (think about the size of what you want to store: cans, bottles, skinny packets? and put 60cm base cabinets on the other side, next to the freezer 2. i can't see the yellow highlights for stools 3. width of pantry is subject to you wanting to keep the door to the formal living room...if so, measure 150mm past the door opening and that's the minimum width of the pantry but 1500mm allows space to comfortably walk past your freezer and have full size base cabinets with pantry drawers (cleaner than open shelves) 4. space between the b'fast bar and 'fridge should be at least 90cm but if you choose a wide b'fast bar and a big 'fridge a bigger space is preferable (stand a couple of chairs 90cm in front of your current fridge for a few days and see how it feels) direction of fridge door opening is also critical, first for the cooks and then everyone else: if the size of the b'fast bar can be enlarged or reduced with overhanging counter then a change of walkway is not so difficult 5. as suggested by girlguide, the cooktop and rangehood might be better on the outside wall for ventilation 6. there seems to be a lot of small cabinets and drawers in your plan and there could be some better (and cheaper) combinations but when i tried to access IKEA kitchen planner to confirm available sizes it's not responding today 7. i've attached my suggested approximate base cabinet sizes: starting with corners and work outwards, aiming for the biggest standard carcases and then add drawers to suit purpose ..

annie_booysen Quartz is a man made stone. It is made from Quartz at around 92-97% by weight of the product not the actual surface area. Quartz stone is know also as Caesarstone, MSI, Cambria, Silestone or any other brand. It is basically manufactured the same way. Other names it goes by is Estone, Man made Stone, Engineered stone etc. Hope that helps, to some it up would be like the difference between Coke and Pepsi. All made the same way, some have just different colours etc.

@Mc10 - We are also recirculating - and we are venting this through a gap in the kickboard where we will eventually also install a mesh / metal grill to keep bugs out etc. When the extractors in full flight it does throw out quite a breeze so make sure wherever you decide to vent isn’t somewhere that will annoy people who are sat - luckily where we vented is into where people just walk though. We hardly lost any storage if you look at the pic I posted what looks like the first drawer at the top is what we boxed in to price clearance and access - I think it was about 15 cms - not that significant as lots of storage space elsewhere.