Minor kitchen remodel - need pictures

[MareQ]

We are doing a minor kitchen remodel. Here's my main floor floor plan - mine is flipped and instead of a mudroom I have a larger room which is a "study" with a stone fireplace and cathedral ceiling . Also my kitchen island is bigger and along the "empty" kitchen wall I have floor to ceiling pantry cabinets)

Basically I DESPISE this kitchen. (Not too keen on the house in general but I refuse to move - lol) I want to eliminate the "formal" dining room and make that the informal eating area/part of the kitchen by knocking down that wall in between both rooms. (Not a load bearing wall - If I ever need a "formal" Dining room I can easily convert my "Living room" - we don't use it and my family room is huge plus we have the study so it's not like we don't have another room to use for "living") Only problem is my stove is there - so I will have to do a half wall of sorts with some sort of a counter top - does anybody have a layout like this? My old kitchen had a full peninsula so I know what that looks like - I am just wondering how to do about doing a half wall type of a thing?

I don't want to mess with any lower cabinets as we have granite counters and I am NOT spending money to replace them. The upper ones can go - I have at least 4 cabinets that are about half full in the kitchen - it's deceiving here but there's a lot of cabinets.


If anybody knows what I am talking about and has any pictures so I can see what we could do here I'd appreciate it.

THANKS!

ETA: Sorry - reason for the remodel is that with all the cabinets on all 4 walls and the bigger island - once you get stools on all 3 sides - it's a bit tight for navigation and I hate eating in the kitchen. I don't like eating in a "formal" dining room with the kids either - so that's why we just want to make it one big area. That way I can just get 3 smaller stools for the kids and eliminate the ones on the sides - right now the ones we have have full backs etc. It's just too cluttered IMO and tootight.

 

[bananiem]

Here's couple of pictures of ours. We don't have a wall, just the breakfast bar type place but you can kind of see what it looks like to have it open. Essentially our kitchen, family room and eating area are one big room.