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Gas stove. That's a non-negotiable.

Dishwasher or room for a portable
disposal
counterspace

Gas stove WITHOUT A DOUBT!!!

A newish fridge... Cannot stand a fridge that doesn't keep stuff really cold. My last apartment's fridge turned on and off all day and milk would last 3 days on average...everything in the freezer defrosted and refroze. I moved.

No carpet...yes, I've seen it.

Storage space. My kitchen now is gorgeous but small... I've turned my kitchen bar into a pantry with a shower curtain cut short. Hard to explain, but if anyone wants to do a kitchen tour *cough, faith, cough* I'd be happy to open my doors.

Electrical outlets... lots of them.

I faced this question when I bought my condo. I didn't want to go bigger than I needed, but I didn't want my kitchen life to suffer, either. I went for new and dependable appliances, a big, deep sink, decent cabinet space, and a great counter top.

I didn't get the great lighting or big pantry, but my kitchen and I have gotten along great in the past year I've lived in my condo! Some say you don't know what you need til you have it, but you also don't know what you can live without until you live without it.

Counterspace and lots of natural light for sure - but my dealbreaker list also includes eat-in space. For some reason, all my friends and I tend to congregate in the kitchen. Never the living room, oh no - it's always the kitchen. It's nice to have a large eat-in space so that I don't have to be away from friends and guests if I'm cooking or plating - we can all share the same area. The best times seem to happen in the kitchen.

Storage is key for me. We currently have the cabinets full, a bar in the living room full, stuff on top of the cabinets, all our good dishes are on top of the fridge and in the basement a huge shelf holding our less used/bigger items and canned goods. It is the biggest pain in the ass.

The very basic non-negociables:
- counter space
- double sink
- vaguely logical stove/fridge/sink layout
- room for two people not to bump into one another
- somewhere for two people to sit at a table (doesn't necessarily have to be roomy)

Second the "room for two people not to bump into one another" - something I don't have now.
High on my wish list is that the kitchen opens to another area of the house so I can interact with the land of the living while I play!

Decent counter space
Gas stove
NO STAINLESS STEEL APPLIANCES

I would love:
natural light
somewhere to put cookbooks
eat-in area, even small
pantry or lots of cabinets

A good sink is crucial - I do the cooking and my husband does the washing-up, so I want him to be happy when I make a ton of dirty dishes! Our last apartment (before we built our house) had a tiny sink shoved into the corner, so you kind of had to lean on one hip on the counter while you used it. So awkward!

adequate storage, decent counter space, dishwasher!

i would love to have a gas stove, but don't now. i'd also really love to have a window to look out while standing at the sink, but don't now. i'm sure i could come up with a large list of things that i want in a kitchen, but feel pretty good about the fact that i have managed to get by with what i have for so long. i don't want to tempt myself to start dreaming about what could be!

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A 13in deep single basin sink; the kind that can hide a dirty stockpot from view, the kind that can handle everything from a dinner party without spilling over the countertop.

I actually would not want an eat-in kitchen, because I think I would then never use the dining room. If I had room for a table in the kitchen, I would instead put a little sofa and coffee table, so people could hang out there, but the dining room would still be the place to eat.

Non-negotiable -- gas stove, now that I finally have one. Dishwasher -- I've lived without one before, and we use enough dishes that it was a huge pain.

I've been a nomad for the past ten years, and cooked in eight different kitchens. Please no chopped up counter spaces. Can I have one decent counter-top---4 or 5 feet will do. But no more little pot-hops, thank you very much. One glorious kitchen had an 8ft long counter, with a higher "bar top" on the dining room side. It was heavenly.

I'm spoiled by my current kitchen - even though it has very little counter space, I bought a 5-ft stainless work table and two undershelves, which gives me just about all the space I could ask for. I also have a big pantry with room for drawers and organizers of almost any sort. When I was looking to move last year, I learned exactly how lucky I was. One place had upper shelves that weren't even deep enough to hold my plates!

My must-haves are a dishwasher, a disposer (mostly because little bits that sneak down the drain will clog it without a disposer), either lots of counter space or room for my work table, a pantry (too many places these days don't have a pantry at all), and I will now always check the depth of the shelves in the place. The only gripe I have with my kitchen is how small the sink is, and how low the faucet is - I can't easily wash any big pans because the faucet is too close to the sink - but it's not a huge issue. It would also be nice to have a range with two large burners instead of just one like I have now.

I have my dream kitchen with a few changes:

DCS gas cooktop like the one we put in my mom's kitchen remodel after she lived there for 41 years. I LOVE that appliance.

I have a gas stove and have sometimes plated the food and walked away when I thought I'd turned the stove off and it was on LOW!! Then I washed the dishes and turned around to put the damp dish towel on the stove and DAMMIT, I'd left the stove on! I also left it on low all day once and came home that evening, thinking, damn it's kinda warm in here! On Mom's cooktop, every control has a little light, so you can tell it's on or off, whereas mine has no indicator light. My kitchen has a ton of natural light and you can't always tell that there is a tiny bit of blue from the gas still going.

Need to have a dishwasher. Also a garbage disposal. Big deep sink. Lotsa counterspace (I used to use the coffee table and dining room table in teeny kitchens in the past). COFFEE Maker, grinder and cappuccino maker (I'm a junkie, I know). Pull out roll trays or drawers on the bottom (makes clean up very fast when putting away.

I would also like to raise the ceiling in my current kitchen and make the side where the sink is more open. And finally, take off the warped wood plantation shutters that block my ocean view from the sink.

Countertops and appliances at the right height.

RANGE HOOD. I don't understand why these aren't standard. Helps keep grease and crap from floating all over the house.

And of course,

Gas stove, dishwasher, counterspace, plenty of cabinets/pantry/closet.

I don't think I have any non-negotiables. I'd love to have a gas range, but I can live with electric if I have to. I'd like to have outlets (any outlets! Seriously!) in my kitchen but I'm doing fine using the mixer, etc in the dining area (which is at the end of my galley kitchen). More counterspace would be fantastic but I'm doing pretty good in the 2ish square feet I normally have to work with.

I guess having non-negotiables implies a better level of "thinking of the future" than I'm usually capable of. I have learned that a larger kitchen does not necessarily mean a more useful kitchen, though.

1. No galley kitchens
2. counter space
3. cabinet space

Pretty simple, hu?

-lots of counter space

-gas stove, wall double oven

-lots of light

-pantry

-one of those built in spice racks between the fridge and cabinets (mine are unorganized in a cabinet and are constantly falling all over each other)

-stainless steel range hood

-pull out trash bins under the sink to do out of view recycling!

I'll second the, "countertops and appliances at the right height".

The last house I built had the countertops raised (in the bathroom too), and it made a world of difference.

(full disclosure: I'm 6' 6")

Lots of counter space, gas range, dishwasher, and large sink are my nonnegotiables.

Dream kitchen would have a pantry, range hood, lots of windows, and an island w/breakfast bar.

I recently bought an apt and renovated the kitchen. I added the one thing that my previous kitchen lacked---drawers. I now have 15 and couldn't be happier. So much easier than rummaging through base cabinets.

Under-cabinet lighting or other forms of task lighting. Relying on ceiling lights alone means I'm always working in my own shadow.

I second the need for a serious sink: in many apartments, you'd think they were there for decoration only. It needs to be deep, have two wells, a faucet that can be turned on and adjusted one-handed, and to have a "sprayer" function (without which it is a pain to rinse produce, pots, the sink itself -anything).

If I were doing a new kitchen, I'd have a 36" wall oven (my current one is 24"), a ceramic cooktop (like I have now in my island), a French door frig (don't have room in this house), a dishwasher, two trash compactors (only have one now but would like a second one for compacting recycle stuff), a quiet disposal, an interesting hood for the cooktop, pots and pans storage that I didn't have to stand on my head to get to. I'd also have my upper cabinets hung at 12" or so instead of the standard as I'm a bit vertically challenged. Oh, and I really need a window wall as I will still want all the daylight I have in my current kitchen.

Terra-cotta tiles.

I think everyone would agree on the the basic necessities for a perfect kitchen, but I was in the process of looking for a Leed Certified Apartment Downtown Chicago, hopefully with some upgrades that were a little more earth friendly, however the only company that I was able to find that knew of any for rent was Urban Lux does anyone else know of any Green Buildings in Chicago? Thanks for your help!