A few days ago the New York Times spotlighted Daniel Vosovic's NYC apartment. Vosovic was a Season 2 finalist on Project Runway and a big audience favorite. He lives in a duplex apartment on the Lower East Side with four roommates. The apartment originally needed quite a lot of work and cleaning, but the results are impressive - especially in the kitchen. Here are our favorite elements of Vosovic's tiny galley kitchen.
Look! Project Runway Star's Excellent Tiny Kitchen
This galley kitchen is just like thousands of others in New York City, Chicago, and other urban areas. It's long and narrow, and just a rental - no real renovation allowed. In fact, it's just like the kitchens that many of you write in and ask for help with.
Well, here are our favorite five elements - all things that the crew of roommates did to open it up and make it more functional. All of these are things that you can do in your own tiny kitchen - not too expensive, and not too hard.
- Install high shelving This high shelf is out of the way and it uses up wall space that would otherwise be empty and useless. Here it's enormously useful as a storage spot for cereal, canned goods, and other staples.
- Use a pegboard We're big fans of the pegboard (hello, Julia Child!) and they use it to great effect here. This is a well-edited and arranged pegboard, too; it's practically wall art! We also like how the pegboard is white, not black or brown; this helps keep the kitchen open and bright.
- Stick on tile flooring You can buy inexpensive vinyl tiles at Home Depot or other big home improvement stores. Cover up bad, bad rental flooring with designs of your own choice.
- Take the doors off! We've talked a lot about open storage in small kitchens. Taking the doors off helps the kitchen feel more open; you just have to be disciplined and well-edited to do this. (Sounds like this particular household is a tight ship; leave dishes in the sink for more than twenty-four hours, they said, and they get stuck in your bed under your covers. Yowza.)
- Buy in bulk and store in stackable containers This is a really good tip for small kitchens and tight spaces. Instead of cluttering your cupboards with unevenly-sized bags of flour, sugar, and beans - buy in bulk (it's cheaper, too) and invest in some reusable, stackable containers. This keeps everything more organized and saves you money in the long run too.
Did you spot any other good tips in this great little kitchen?
• Read the story: Home, Hangout, Departure Lounge
Related: Gallery and Kitchen Spotlight: Open Storage in Small Kitchens
Tags
Kitchen Spotlight, Project Runway, Daniel VosovicRelated Links
- Kitchen Spotlight: Anna's Sleek Black and White
- More Small Kitchens from Small Cool 2009
- Kitchen Spotlight: Slide-Out Worktops in a Tiny Galley
- Have You Seen This Tiny NYC Kitchen?
- Kitchen Tour Favorites: Five Creative Storage Solutions
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does anybody actually use this kitchen? The magnetic knife rack has some handles pointing up and some pointing down. That's just asking for someone to get poked.
view jumpyfroggy's profile
Wow, that dishes in the bed thing is something we used to do in college. It's really effective!
view cakekick's profile
What do people do with the cabinet doors? I hate my cabinet doors (none of them, absolutely none of them close completely!), but I don't have a "storage closet" by any stretch of the term. And for the stick-on linoleum tiles, how easily do they come up? Incredibly cheap faux marble linoleum looks terrible, but the idea of paying extra for the "damage" I did to the apartment sounds even more terrible. Or do people that make improvements like this to their apartments not consider moving out in the conceivable future?
view alysaaria's profile