I am cleaning and organizing my kitchen today, so later on I'll have some photos. (I MAY have guests Saturday but it may just be one person, read the Coronavirus thread for why probably not... even though I have planned that all six of us can eat six feet apart without masks.... out in the living room etc... ) It may just be me and one other Massachusetts resident.
At any rate, i did design (with help) and build my own retirement home here, and the majority of my kitchen plans were followed through upon. This is from a log home kit, so I did save a lot of money.
I worked it so that I have: prep workspace looks outdoors. Why would a window over a sink be optimal? Most of us do dishes, especially dinner ones, after dark - especially in winter. My sink faces the dining table. This is not a True dining room, but it is on the other side of the peninsula housing the sink, dishwasher, and trash drawers. This way anyone doing dishes can talk to people at the table. (I really really hated being sent into the kitchen as a teen to do the dishes right around all the guests were getting talking over dessert, and no, I was NOT an obnoxious conversationalist - mother just wanted the dishes done before everyone left. So she could go to bed when they left.) When home alone (way too often this year...) I can look up and out the dining table to the eastern landscape with New England trees. During daylight, if needed.
Lots of under counter drawers. My builder put in less than requested, but what I do have... works well enough for me. I also regret he didn't put in the vertical shelf slots for baking pans and platters and the like. Oh well. I don't use them that often, so they are stacked in one of those lower cabinets.
I have shelves for my cookbooks.
The plumber convinced me to put the pantry where I'd planned to put the laundry - the laundry is now in the guest bathroom. I am glad he did - I have an upright freezer in there.
I never could find a good backsplash that I liked for behind the range - so, it is sheetrock, painted with washable grade paint. I have never lived in a home with tiled backsplash to begin with - you really don't miss what you don't have. The range is Induction. Since the house is heated with propane, I could have gone with that, but I have not been impressed with gas at low temperatures, and after 3 years here, I really DO love the induction. It is bad for using a wok, but I do have a charcoal grill out there.
My microwave is countertop. The drawer things are expensive. And I have enough counter space that my still-working unit is up there - don't see the point in wasting money when I was already wasting, er bleeding out, er, spending money on things that mattered to me more. I live rural. People here are not remotely trying to one-up each other.
A lot of my planning was based around the full fledged loathing of my old kitchen back in Connecticut. Seriously. It was built late 60s by someone who probably went to McD's or bought TV dinners ever night. I worked with what I HATED about that one, and went from there. There'd been no upper cabinets to speak of (okay, ONE), and I am over six feet tall with a bad back. There was no prep surface - I ended up using the range top corners to prepare food on. I got some pointers from a kitchen forum elsewhere on line - and ended up improving on what I already had decided.
My dishwasher is low end. I can always do that by hand. My fridge is mid-range to low - I really (being tall) wanted a bottom freezer. I hate finding dead things down at the bottom of a fridge, and being tall, this made sense to me. My induction range costs a bit more but I wanted induction (and love it).
Being a log kit home, I wanted warm textures and colors. The white in here is Sherwin Williams Canvas White - a warm, canvas color. Black appliances, because at that time I could not stand stainless steel (I have seen enough of this since then that stainless steel would be fine for me - but I still love what I did do).
Photos later. I want breakfast, and I want to do chickens/quail, and since it is up to 50 F plus today, the staining and wood preserving out doors that is most critical - and then I want to do the cleanups / reorganizing I'd be doing anyway.