It's for the separation of clean-up activities from food preparation. Why would you want to rinse your lettuce or any other fresh food in a sink full of dirty pots? It's the result of zoning the kitchen into areas for specific tasks. Rinsing plates and pots, clean-up, the dishwasher, garbage, and recycling can go into one zone, with a sink for that purpose and preparation such as washing vegetables, peeling, chopping and compost collection can be in another area, with a sink for that purpose and the conflicts between the two are reduced.

We are a little biased, but wood floors are versatile, durable, clean, and timeless. Whereas carpet will eventually need to be replaced, high quality wood floors can last forever. You can install radiant heat under the wood floors if you are worried about them being too cold during certain times of year, and you can easily install area rugs over the flooring. Wood flooring is also more versatile than it has ever been so you can create any look. As an added bonus you can easily sweep and mop your wood floors, whereas with Carpet you don't always know what is lying below the surface. Good luck!

Why Floors Should Be One Of The Most Important Investments When Buying A Property | HARO Flooring New Zealand

Thanks for your comments everyone. We've taken your advice (Luke and NH) and changed the island to a rectangle (1200 x 3000). We lose one breakfast bar seat but gain storage and dining room space plus it shortens the distances from the island to the cooktops. It also removes the need for a corner carousel. We're much happier with this result. Dairy_maid, we've done what you suggested and walked through some common tasks. Overall it works reasonably well although we may keep some coffee spoons and butter knives in the scullery drawers for morning toast and coffee. We've also invested in a "silent" rangehood which has the motor on the outside of the house behind the fridge and we've upgraded the scullery sink to one that is 600 x 400 (internal size). Fabrication starts tomorrow. Woohoo. Once again, thanks so much for taking the time to respond. The design has been significantly improved with your input.