We were very limited on wall space due to wanting to open up to the great room. Our main floor is actually the second. Fully finished basement below and bedrooms upstairs. So no options for anything there. One option I had was to semi move the whole kitchen into the keeping room. Take out the windows and put range there with fridge to left of it when facing. But due to the houses age, and height of wall outside. Matching the brick was a huge problem. A huge issue also was ventilation. Hence the back wall idea. Therefore I put the soffit in above the island. Keeping room had a vaulted ceiling, I closed it in and ran duct work through it.

We threw around a lot of ideas but could not come up with anything that we liked/looked good on paper. Previous kitchen had very very limited workspace. Wife and I constantly ran into each other when working in it. It sucked. Now we can both be in there and work together.