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^Our island is the same. It has room to seat 4-6, cabinets with pull-out bins for garbage and recycling, a prep sink, a wine fridge, and tons of storage. It's a great place to do meal prep.
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We bought our Chapel Hill house 5 years ago and I picked it for the great lot and the terrific kitchen. It has a Dacor Range with a retractable exhaust panel in the back but to be honest I rarely use it. Don't fry very much and the open kitchen, dining room and family room mean I never get moisture or smoke problems. However I would not recommend the builder cause he is a crook and ran off with our appliance and fence allowance. He has declared bankruptcy several times and I think he now works as a handy man.
But more importantly I don't think there are any decent buildable lots in chapel Hill, especially within the CH/C school district.
Exactly, LOL. It's supposed to be storage/prep/homework but it's really just a big nuisance. I REALLY don't like the sink or cooktop in the island - that's even worse. "Where's that receipt I need?" Oops, it got too close to the cooktop!
At least these are just builders' kitchens. When we lived in NY I knew these people who had spent about $100K, maybe more, on theirs and the layout was so completely wrong it was crazy. The counter even had a little decorative bumpout, like a wave, between the sink and the dishwasher, so you had to step around it to get from sink to dishwasher instead of bending over like normal.
We had a horrible peninsula in our old 70s kitchen that we tore out. It was awful — had the dishwasher in the corner so you couldn't unload it and put things in the cabinets above it, didn't have any overhang for seating on the backside, nor access to the cabinets from that side, and was completely an obstacle to get around. I hated that thing.
I'm confused... island cooktop here, used several times almost every day. Our friends even say we know how to cook. Where's the problem?
I think it probably depends on the type of cooking you do and the size of the island + the type of cooktop + the type of venting. I do a lot of high heat cooking where oil splatters and/or a fair amount of smoke is not uncommon (I swear this is not due to lack of skill ). I also like to use stinky ingredients (hello fish sauce!). So for me, the worst island cooktops are those that are small + don't have a hood overhead + have lights overhead instead. The downdraft venting just isn't enough for me and I am pretty sure I would destroy any pendant lighting overhead. And if the island area is small, then I don't have a lot of room for the ingredients plus I worry about the oil splattering everywhere (on people, on the other side of the island, etc.). But I could see an island cooktop working for me if the island were really large and had a big ole hood on top of it that was powerful enough to keep the mess and aromas contained.
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). I also like to use stinky ingredients (hello fish sauce!). So for me, the worst island cooktops are those that are small + don't have a hood overhead + have lights overhead instead. The downdraft venting just isn't enough for me and I am pretty sure I would destroy any pendant lighting overhead. And if the island area is small, then I don't have a lot of room for the ingredients plus I worry about the oil splattering everywhere (on people, on the other side of the island, etc.). But I could see an island cooktop working for me if the island were really large and had a big ole hood on top of it that was powerful enough to keep the mess and aromas contained.
