Kitchen walk-in larder - use it or lose it?

biggus_richus

I'd like to refurbish my kitchen, but struggling to come up with a layout due to the lack of space for tall housings (and I'd really like a midi oven and tall fridge freezer). This is roughly how it currently looks:



The top left corner sounds hollow, so suspect it is just plasterboard. The window to the left meets the worktop, the window to the top ends 18" above the worktop. To the bottom is a utility room, separate only via a plywood partition as the windows join directly to the door in that wall. To the right is an understairs cupboard, currently serving as a larder/pantry. The door is less than 6 ft tall and the staircase cuts a 30 cm triangle across the top left corner, meaning I have to stoop and/or nod to the right to get in. It is however, well utilised. The double doors are actually a glass partition with sliding door through to the dining room. The wall up the middle is load-bearing.

We have three suggestions to increase the amount of tallhousing space:

Remove the glass partition and put a midi oven housing adjacent to the wall. Not too keen on the idea of kids coming tearing round the corner while the oven is open. Fridge freezer goes top right, everything else as is.

Replace the window in the utility room with a door and brick up the existing door. Fridge freezer goes there, along with some proper studwork to separate the utility room,washing machine moves to the bottom edge, oven goes top right, everything else as is. There's a gas meter partly under the window, so I don't know what the final location of the door will be.

Board up the existing larder door and put a new doorway in via the dining room. Remove glass partition; oven and fridge freezer go to the right, along with a slim pull-out larder. In order to mitigate against the loss of the larder, it has been suggested moving the sink to the left hand worktop and putting the hob in the top worktop, along with a downdraft extractor, freeing up the top left corner for wall units and reclaiming space around the cooker

I love the dual aspect of the room (left hand side faces south), and it's great for keeping an eye on my son in the garden, so I'm against bricking up a window. But the dual aspect-ness is also causing a bit of a headache.

Can anyone offer any advice?