Hi,

I am planning to redo my kitchen and have gotten several quotes, but contradictory advice; I have gotten quotes from cabinet makers and from people who own a showroom and order from a company.

Kitchen is 177" x 113" (so, about 15' x 9.5').
It only has two walls, so the cabinets will be an L. The refrigerator is on the shorter wall. The sink is in the corner of the L. There's a window between the sink and the refrigerator.
There will be an island. It will be 102" long. I would like to do a half waterfall; the end without the quartz on it will face the refrigerator, with shelves for recipe books. There will be seating on the side that faces the dining room. The waterfall side will face the living room.
The ceilings are 10' high. The house is not HUGE, but it's not tiny, either. I will have 36" wall cabinets.

Here's what I have been told about the island:

The cabinets for the island should be 30" deep. Any space behind the drawers would therefore be lost. In this configuration, the back of it (which would face the dining room) would be paneling, so the island will look like a piece of furniture. So, after adding a 12" overhang, I end up with 42" countertop. Final dimensions: 102" x 42".
The "standard" is to do 24" cabinets on the front of it and 12" cabinets on the back of it. That means I have doors facing the people sitting on the bar stools. Those doors could be without handles and have the "open when you push the door" type feature. With this configuration, 24 + 12 = 36". Adding the 12" overhang leads to a 48" countertop. Final dimensions: 102" x 48".
One guy said that one 30" cabinet is weaker than doing two cabinets back to back. That if I ever needed to stand on the countertop, it would not do well. And yes, I could see myself wanting to stand on it to change a lightbulb. This reasoning sounded logical to me. You have an extra "wall" between the front and back cabinets.
Another guy said that the 30" cabinet is actually STRONGER.
Putting doors on the same side where people are sitting means people are kicking doors, and it is noisy... because doors will move.
A 48" wide countertop would be too big for the kitchen. He said it would look bad.
Could they both be right about the strength, depending on how cabinets happen to be built?
More importantly, what do you recommend?

My first concern is STRENGTH. I do want the most solid piece of furniture. My second concern is SIZE.

I would really appreciate your feedback. For completeness, I modified a diagram (which I'm not sure is to scale) and included it below. The yellow spot shows where the wires are sticking out of the floor, so that MUST be part of the island. The dining room is south of the island. The living room is west of the island.

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Thanks!

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