Kitchen with garden access

A traffic pattern can make or break a kitchen, no matter what its size. For Trigg McLeod, mother of two young children in Larkspur, California, it was her kitchen's L-shaped counter that exasperated her. "I'd be in the kitchen and one of the kids would need something, and I'd have to go all the way around the L and then back again," she explains. Her husband, Bill, suggested they simply cut out a section of the counter and open it up on both sides. That got the McLeods thinking about their ideal configuration for the entire space. So they turned to architect Neal Schwartz, who had designed their master suite addition a few years earlier.