Rental kitchens! The most difficult part of a rental apartment. We are mostly stuck with the kitchens that come with our rented dwellings, and yet there are ways to add pops of color and small functional improvements to even the dreariest rental kitchen. Here are a few examples from ten recent Apartment Therapy house tours of personalized rental kitchens big and small. More

We've been talking about rental kitchen makeovers, and we often hear laments about bland oak cabinets and brown tile. So here's one idea: don't fight the rental kitchen brown. Embrace it. More

Last week we asked if you needed a kitchen makeover. Lots of you do, apparently, because we already have an inbox full of submissions! Here's our first attempt to offer a little advice and inspiration to a kitchen in need of a makeover. How would you help improve this kitchen?

Name: Erin and Brendan
Location: Inner Sunset area of San Francisco, California
Rent or own? Rent

Read on for what Erin and Brendan want in their kitchen, plus their constraints. We offer a few tips, ideas, and paint colors. How would you make over this kitchen? More

Do you have a rental kitchen with old cabinets or terrible wallpaper? Are you stuck in an ugly kitchen that you don't have the power (or money) to remodel? We'd love to see it and offer any advice we can to help you spruce it up on a budget. We want to help you love your kitchen and cook in it more often! More

And, despite the charming photo above, we mean one cast-iron skillet. That's the opinion of writer Jhumpa Lahiri (author of Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake), who gets nostalgic about vacation house kitchens in today's Times dining section. More

We just received this simply lovely budget kitchen makeover from reader Leea in central Mexico. She has a rental kitchen, so she couldn't change much, and yet she made a stunning difference — on a budget too! Read on for dramatic before and after photos, as well as Leea's budget makeover tips for rental kitchens. More

We get a little smarter - and pickier - about what we look for in a kitchen every time we move. During this last round of apartment hunting, we came up with a list of things we wanted to check, consider, and evaluate in every kitchen we saw. Take a look at the things we thought were important! More

Here's a little end-of-day kitchen bliss for you: a sunny white kitchen in a San Francisco rental apartment. The kitchen may be all white and beige in that rental-kitchen way, but the windows that open into the garden and the minimal clean decoration have made this an oasis of tranquility. More

When looking for a new apartment, we foodies often have a long list of "ideals". We want ample counter space, decent storage, good natural light, and a gas stove, too, if you please. After all, we're spending a lot of time in there! There's one other factor that we might not always think to consider: how close the place is to a grocery store. More

Here' a little end-of-Thursday kitchen eye candy for you. But it's so far from a show kitchen or an over-the-top space. It's a simple, unpretentious kitchen with light streaming in and a sunny, relaxing shade of yellow. We should all be so lucky. More