As any corporate boss can tell you, headquarters tends to get all the bells and whistles. In kitchen appliances, overkill isn't over. The trend toward commercial stoves and refrigerators, such as those by Viking and Wolf and Sub-Zero, has been reinforced by the shift of such traditional makers as Whirlpool, Maytag, GE and Amana into professional-quality gear and by a changed appearance in the everyday American kitchen. "Everyone is striving for a commercial look," says Tommy Genussa, president of TAG Homes Inc. in New Orleans. "That means stainless-steel appliances. Even in modest homes, the movement is toward as much stainless steel as possible."

The kitchen has become the home's ego, the place where owners choose to strut their stuff. "People treat their kitchens much differently than they did in the recent past," says Russell Morash, creator of the home-renovation television show This Old House. "We've moved away from well-mannered, out-of-the-way appliances to in-your-face kitchen as theater." Morash says the "$100,000 kitchen" has replaced the killer bathroom at the top of the dream-house wish list.

Robert Bell, an architect based in Washington, says the metamorphosis of the kitchen also relates directly to our ability to afford leisure and space. "Over the years, the kitchen has been influenced by places like the beach house, where people go to play and relax, that have always used the big-room design," says Bell. "People say, 'I like that,' and so they just brought it into their own homes."

Bell worked with Karen and Jeff Berman, who recently spent close to a year remodeling their 1940s house in Larchmont, N.Y., knocking down walls to create a knockout kitchen that opens into large living and eating areas. The Bermans put their money where the activity is. "We devoted a lot of effort to planning and designing the kitchen because our family loves to cook, loves to eat and loves to entertain," says Karen, a serious cook.

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The addition of big, shiny gadgets is also viewed as proof that guys are hanging around too. "Men have taken to cooking and made it into a hobby and a locus of consumption and gadgetry," says design critic Thomas Hine. That helps explain the increasing popularity of such accessories as wine coolers, warming drawers, pot fillers and built-in espresso machines the size of church organs. For the ultrachic kitchen that has everything, the impulse is to buy things in pairs: two stoves and two dishwashers. You can throw the kitchen sink into the twofer department too.

Given its mission creep, the kitchen had to grow—so it ate the living room, walls and all. The 3-ft. by 10-ft. galley is now a massive 20 ft. by 20 ft., with a breakfast bar or dining nook. "If you have a party, everybody ends up hanging out in the kitchen. That's where you spend so much of your time, whether you're cooking, eating or sitting around and yakking," says Martha Stewart (no, not that one) of Ames, Iowa, who is finishing a major overhaul. "I want it to be a comfortable place where other people will enjoy spending time."

Veronica Fowler and her husband Giles just dismantled the living room in their 1930s Cape Cod-style home in Ames, tearing down two walls to add volume and connect it to the needs of the present. Says Veronica, a garden writer and renovation addict: "When you move into a house, you're moving into the lifestyle of that era. If it's a 1970s house, you will have to suffer the conversation pit. Our 1930s house was small. People's needs, desires and expectations were completely different than they are in 2002."

For today's time-stressed family—traditional or single parent, blended or extended—there's an obvious need and desire for togetherness. "People are really wanting the experience of the family operating in the same space. And maybe that has to do with the fact that people aren't home so much anymore," says Barbara Winslow, co-author of Patterns of Home, an architectural guide for home buyers that focuses on behavior as much as it does design.

There's a critical distinction in today's definition of family togetherness, though: it doesn't necessarily mean doing the same thing. And that difference is reflected in design. Says Hine, author of the forthcoming I Want That! How We All Became Shoppers: "Now people have such different schedules; they eat different things; they have such diverse needs. So instead of the informality of the house being about family cohesion, it has to do with accommodating these different lifestyles." That's why the perfect great room, explains architect and Patterns of Home co-author Max Jacobson, has private edges like window seats, alcoves and nooks that allow family members to be near the group but by themselves.

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