Cooking Up a New Kitchen

I am insane.

Okay, yes, we all knew that. But I am really insane because out of all the rooms in this apartment I have decided to tackle the kitchen first. If there was one room I could completely remodel it would be the kitchen. Now don't get me wrong, it's quite a lovely kitchen and much better than the galley style kitchens you see in many apartments, but it's lacking one key feature. Adequate cabinet/counter space.


I understand that this is a common kitchen complaint, but I just can't tolerate this lack of space anymore. Our kitchen has gone through a few different phases and I managed to scrounge up a few photos of it when we first moved in so you can see it as a blank slate.

One of the biggest problems with our apartment in general is the layout. We are on the second floor of what used to be a single family house. Therefore the rooms are all chopped up and there is no natural flow to our apartment. When you enter the kitchen you've got your appliances and cabinets on your left:

Aaaand that's pretty much the extent of our cabinet space right there. Turn a little more to the right and you can see the stove and nothingness:

Keep turning to your right and you're met with more blank space and the fridge:

And now you've seen all there is to see in our kitchen. It's tiny, but to be honest my only complaint is the lack of storage and counter space. We had a kitchen table in the corner (across from the oven and to the left of the fridge), which helped for a while:

But the reality is my husband and I have an incredibly bad habit of eating in the living room. The kitchen table quickly became a terrifying dumping ground for clothes, papers, purses, etc. I recently moved the table into the living room where it's been much more useful. We eat our dinners at the table now instead of on the couch and because we're using it for its intended purpose there is minimal clutter.

I swapped the kitchen table out for a small end table that holds our pressure cooker and food processor. There is no room for our china and extra glasses right now so they are in living in storage bins on the floor:

Definitely NOT the best use of this space!

The rest of our minimal counter space is taken up by the microwave, toaster, espresso machine and Keurig machine:

I'm not even going to tackle the cabinets in this post... That's an entirely different beast. But cabinets or not, it's clear that this kitchen needs an overhaul. Next up: Small kitchen inspiration and organization ideas.