Kitchen planning: the figures a plan has to hold, and the order they get fixed in
A kitchen plan is checked in three passes: the clearances the room has to hold, the counter beside each appliance, and whether the appliances fit their openings. Published planning guidelines put a work aisle at 42 inches (1067 mm) for one cook and 48 inches (1219 mm) where more than one person cooks.
The three passes a kitchen plan has to survive
The first pass is clearance, meaning the gaps people stand, turn and pass in. Published planning guidelines put a work aisle, the space between two working faces, at 42 inches (1067 mm) for one cook and 48 inches (1219 mm) where more than one person cooks, and a walkway that nobody works in at 36 inches (914 mm). Aisles are measured between finished faces, which includes counter overhangs and handles.
The second pass is counter. The same guidelines publish a landing area beside every appliance: 24 inches (610 mm) and 18 inches (457 mm) either side of the primary sink, 12 inches (305 mm) and 15 inches (381 mm) beside a cooking surface, and 15 inches (381 mm) at the refrigerator, the oven and the microwave. Counter only counts where it is at least 16 inches (406 mm) deep.
The third pass is fit: whether each appliance goes into the opening drawn for it, at the cutout its own manufacturer publishes rather than at its overall size, and whether the aisle survives its door being open. Ventilation belongs to this pass too, because the duct route is decided while the ceiling is open and it is what makes a hood work or not.
The two dates after which a kitchen stops being changeable
The cabinet order is the first. It fixes hinge sides, finished ends, fillers, appliance panels and the corner solution, and a field nobody filled in on that order is a part the factory chooses. Countertop template day is the second: from the moment the fabricator measures the installed cabinets, the position of every cabinet under that top is frozen.
Everything in the three passes above is free to change before those two dates and expensive after them, which is the only real argument for checking a drawing carefully while it is still a drawing.
Published planning guideline. Three kinds of number appear across these pages and they are kept apart. A published planning guideline is a recommendation from an industry body and nobody enforces it. A code figure is model code text that is required in many US jurisdictions, and what applies where you live is decided by your building department. A manufacturer figure is a dimension one named maker publishes for one of its own products, and it does not transfer to another product.
How to read an appliance spec sheet without missing the number that matters
A spec sheet is written for the installer, not the buyer. Overall size against cutout size, counter depth against finished depth, and the depth with the doors open that collides with the aisle.
The thirteen fields that get missed on a cabinet order
A cabinet order goes wrong in a field, not in a dimension. The thirteen boxes that get left blank, what arrives when they do, and how to check an order against the drawing line by line.
What happens on countertop template day, and what to settle before it
A fabricator measures the installed cabinets and leaves with the drawing your top is cut from. What has to be true before they arrive, what gets decided on the day, and what you are signing.
How much space do you need between kitchen counters
Published planning guidelines put a work aisle at 42 inches for one cook and 48 for more than one, and a walkway at 36. They are different numbers, and measured between finished faces.
How much counter space you need beside the sink, the range and the refrigerator
Published planning guidelines give a counter figure for every appliance in a kitchen: 24 and 18 inches at the sink, 12 and 15 beside the cooking surface, 15 at the refrigerator. Here they are, with the rules that decide what counts.
What size range hood do you need over a 30 inch range
Airflow is only half of it. One manufacturer counts a 90 degree elbow as 15 equivalent feet against a 150 equivalent foot limit for its own hoods, which is why the duct route decides whether a hood works.