apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

More countertop space --- especially next to my stove where there is currently a stupidly-located access to the furnace which prevents any kind of real cabinet or countertop being placed there.

Outlets IN the kitchen!

I'd also love to see the tile countertops replaced with something that doesn't have used-to-be-white grout, replace the badly etched sink and install a dish drainer over the sink instead of a mostly useless shelf (currently too close to the faucet to install a dish drainer over the top myself).

More light! My kitchen is all dark wood paneling and cabinets with one smallish window. A solar tube would be great to brighten it up. Any other ideas?

~Mrs. Foss

Oh, and a gas stove instead of electric and shelves in the alcove where the fridge originally went. Re-finish the wood cabinets and new nobs and drawer pulls. A bright splash of paint on the few non-wood wall spaces. Maybe new counter tops . . . As long as I'm dreaming.

~Mrs. Foss

New counters next to the sink and a new sink - the rest of the kitchen is pretty and vitage - the sink area is just falling apart and depressing. I'd also replace the enormous clunky fridge with a tiny one.

I wish I had a dishwasher. My kitchen feels almost like an after-thought in my apartment, so there's really no space. Everything else has a solution- make counter space with a cutting board over the sink, make it brighter with a huge mirror on one wall, etc.

My galley sized kitchen is actually quite efficient but I do wish that I had a gas stove and two ovens. I'd love a center island to really sprawl out but know that would just be wasted space. All in, I'm pretty happy with our kitchen setup.

I live in a 1920s building in Chicago, so the kitchen is relatively small. I wish I had a smaller (more European-size - I'm from England) fridge (two people cannot possibly keep the huge one we have filled), and a dishwasher.

1) Less gross floors (including all tiles matching--we'd even settle for all tiles being a matching gross grey as opposed to having a few gross brown ones on the border). Stick-down tiles ARE NOT an option for us, though, unless they could be very removable and we could guarantee we wouldn't futz up the floor.
2) No more plastic white cupboard handles that scream "dorm room furnishings" (we thought briefly about buying all new, replacing, and just taking our handles with us when we moved--but then priced the anthropologie handles I wanted and balked at spending $180). Cute, cheaper door handle solutions solicited.

It's one of the more workable kitchens I've seen in a tiny Boston apartment, though. So I can't gripe a lot.

My kitchen reaches maximum occupancy at 1.5 persons. No counter space is my beast of burden. Plus little cabinet space—I store pots and pans in my coat closet. Wanting a dish washer is so far down the list that it's not on my radar.

The linoleum that gets dirty just by looking at it.

The placement of the stove and fridge on the other side of the room from the sink.

Other than that...I can't complain. I have so much counter and storage space.

I wish it was a bit wider. I have a little galley style kitchen and its so narrow the fridge door cant even open all the way! Hits the counters across from it. This also makes it almost impossible for 2 people to be in there at the same time.

Also inside cabinets all the shelves are too short, you cant even fit a standard cereal box or bottle of olive oil in them, too tall! The shelves appear to possibly be adjustable but we could never figure out how.

Also the lighting is really poor. No windows or natural light, and a single tiny one bulb fixture on the ceiling. To make it worse, the fixture is constantly burning out. Lived here for just a year and have changed the bulb probably 8 times. There has to be something wrong with the fixture we don't leave it on that much.

In the perfect world my fairly good-sized apartment would utilized some of the wasted space that exists in our living room/dining room/exercise area into a larger kitchen, which currently can fit 2 people, if those people have practice the required cooking dance ritual as to not run into each other.

Something a little more likely, better organized cupboard space. Their current design is not at all the best utilization of space for maximum storage.

Oh dear gods, what wouldn't I change. I have a galley kitchen. Two counter spaces, including one for the microwave. Three cabinets, including one over the fridge that you can never reach. We've installed a bunch of potracks and still have no space. If I could, I'd install a new cabinet (we put in a bathroom shelf as a place to put our glassware) with an underhanging microwave, replace the dishwasher (it's SO LOUD) and replace the electric stove (still electric would be fine, just not something that takes 45 minutes to preheat the oven to 425*). I'd also get some non-crappy flooring.

(I'm moving out of my apartment in June. The new kitchen's not much bigger, but I'll have 5 cabinets and 3 times the counter space. It's a very good thing)

@fade on violet, if you're worried about efficiency, keep a bunch of soda or water in the fridge. Good for emergencies and it helps keep things cool in the event of a power outage. (Oh, the justifications I come up with for my soda addiction...)

I'd love a custom built-in plate warmer. Other than that, my tiny kitchen is perfection!

Forgot to add a photo! My nephew cooking dinner in my kitchen. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mylastbite/3275273807/

I would like to have my sink at the window, where the radiator now is. And have a radiator on the wall (above the washing machine) to dry my towels, like those bathroom-radiators.

A dishwasher. Barring that, a boyfriend who washes them. If that can't happen, a full-size sink that doesn't spray water everywhere.

Other pipe dreams: a gas stove and a real broiler. Enough room for two people to cook. Cabinets I can reach. Tiling that doesn't seem to absorb dirt and crumbs. A fan that works. An oven that fits my muffin pan. A full-size fridge/freezer. Walls that I can nail things into... half of them are solid concrete and the others paper thin so I can't even get a paper towel rack to stay hung up. Somehow we managed to move out of New York and ended up with an even smaller kitchen.

Improving the lighting would be one of my priorities - I have one of those typical 70's galley-style kitchens partitioned off to the back of the living room, so it gets no natural light.

I would definitely take great pleasure in ripping out the dingy-looking faux-wood cupboards and replacing them with, well, pretty much anything whose finish is not peeling off!

Finally, I would repaint the walls and replace the flooring. The vinyl I have right now looks is rather pretty, but it is intricately embossed and hard to clean.

Thankfully, the layout is very efficient and the appliances are good quality, so my kitchen is great to cook in if not pretty to look at!

Ah let's see in order of preference:

I would make the drawers close on the first try, without me having to talk them into it;

I would have more counter space, by the stove, which is across the room on it's own far, far away from the counter;

Laminate cabinets would be outs, as would the warped countertop;

Floors.

Wouldn't change: my sa-weet pot rack, the fact that I have a gas stove finally and the fact that despite it's fall backs I can still cook a good meal up in there.

I have a fairly small kitchen, and the silly uncaring landlord has purchased the most gigantic stove and fridge. It is even more ridiculous that these things take up so much space because the oven on the stove is broken! Also, the countertop/backsplash is some disgusting yellow faux bois (sp?) mess. Unfortunately for me, I am a student and cannot afford to make changes to any of these things. I wish I could make it a space to love because the rest of the apartment is quite nice (aside from the terribly scratched floors and minor state of disrepair of some of the plaster/ceilings...)

I would replace the granite countertops (it's a calico-speckled brown I think is hideous and so hard that acrylic will shatter if dropped on it). I would ABSOLUTELY replace the stone tile floor! The rest of the apartment has nice wood floors. My first couple weeks in there, my legs were killing me! I put in some inexpensive FLOR carpeting. It looks nice and solves the problem, but I really don't like carpeting in the kitchen.

My cabinet doors have been painted over and over so many times that most of them don't shut. My kitchen always looks a bit disheveled because of this. Since I'm a renter (and limited on workspace/skills), I've never had the motivation to strip them down (and/or plane the edges) to get them to close properly.

Oh dear lord - is everything a legitimate answer?

More surface area - i have like no counter space, very little cupboard space - poor set up so hanging on the walls is also just highly unlikely. I had to ditch a microwave just to try and get a little bit more counter space.

An electric oven and a gas range, i hate gas ovens, always have, a second oven as well...

basically my kitchen has no room for two people either, it's a disaster, but even in the bad economy santa barbara real estate stinks (along with my credit)

My kitchen came with a single basin sink built into an area with two particle board cabinets and a drawer for cutlery. There's a gas connection as well. That's it. There is no overhead cabinetry or other built-in shelving, no counter space, no built-in appliances of any kind, and a ventilation fan which is essentially a cheap plastic fan in front of a hole in the wall which opens up to the outdoors (so insects and even lizards can climb in through it if the fan is off). Welcome to Tokyo.

What don't I want to change about my kitchen?

Great day, where do I start?
-replacement for the peeling and chipped sheet laminate counter-tops.
-gas stove rather than electric.
-stove ventilation so I can actually cook in the summertime without raising the temperature and humidity inside the house. It's not a problem in the winter, but I live in the deep south. Lawd-a-mercy it can get hot and humid.
-some pull-out drawers in the lower cabinets so I can get to my stuff without stooping all the way to the floor and stressing my back.
Sounds like I live in squalor but it's otherwise pretty nice. And I'm working on righting the wrongs in the kitchen. A constant work in progress.

An oven that goes to the temperature that I want it too (I put on 350 and it goes 400), definitely more counter space, and a bigger sink.

I would add a dishwasher, change the colors of everything and fix the walls- our landlords painted over hideous old textured wallpaper!

I would add a penisula that goes into the dining room area from the kitchen. I would get a smeg refrig and similar appliances. I would also get a more funky looking countertop. nj countertops by replacementcounters.com

@Orchid64, I cooked in a Tokyo kitchen once. You remind me that my teensy NY kitchen is not so bad!

I would get smaller appliances. One person who eats out most of the time does not need a full size fridge, oven, and stovetop!

Of the many things I would change about my kitchen, the one I want most is a new stove. A full size one. That would stay above 350 degrees.

let's see....

1. within the next three years or so, we'll have to redo the whole thing. It's now 26 years old and showing it. The laminate countertops are beyond their last legs and while the oak cabinets could be refinished, they are hideous - anyone want some 80s colonial style cabinets with god-awful fittings? It's not a huge kitchen by any stretch and looks heavy and dark. Flooring - cheap vinyl that the previous owners installed at some point.

2. paint: previous owners have a drab greyish/khaki/beige on the wals, if you can imagine it. yuck. So we'll start here: it's all going white for now, with a plan for super vibrant jewelly yellow in a few years.

3. appliances: fridge is new and we're happy. oven is on last legs as is dishwasher. we'll see what we get when these die out.

4. windows - are great! nice and light, especially once we get the dark paint and old cabinets out.

Longterm: new cabinets -we're liking ultramodern high gloss white with brushed steel finishings. That would go well with our desire for super yellow. flooring - not too into tile, so would like a good quality linoleum product, and preferably black/white squares (having lived in the Netherlands, I miss it!). Countertops - we're researching and pricing, but laminate is *not* preferred!

we actually own our home but because our kitchen needs a complete remodel, which we can't afford at this point, it's indefinitely postponed.

so for short term i'd like:

-a gas stove
-new flooring (i want wood or italian tile, but would take the poorest quality of ANYTHING just to make it look better than the chipped brown mini bathroom tiles that are there now)
-A new dishwasher (the one that came w/ the house is the portable sink hook-up type and it’s pretty gross so I stopped using it. So now we spend a lot of extra time washing dishes)
-a bigger fridge (ours is always packed with not enough shelves, so it gets really messy quickly)

New cabinets. Or even just new paint on the cabinet doors. our whole house is white, but we have gross brownish beige cabinets and drawers.

Maybe also hardwood on the floor.

Oh and a hood above the stove.

...I guess i'd change more then i thought

Replace the 20-year-old white Ikea cabinets that are falling apart, please. How about a decent ventilation system for the handful of us who actually cook in our NYC apartments? And I'd love good (i.e, not crappy drywall/plaster) walls so that I can confidently put up some shelves. Thank you.

I can't complain. Over the past two weekends as part of my Cure, I've worked really hard changing the things I use to hate about my rental kitchen. I sabotaged the mismatched stovetop hood so the landlord would replace it. I removed some cabinet doors to give myself a beautiful view of the clear glasses and white plates we were hiding before. It breaks up the monotony of the cabinets I had been itching to paint white.

The almond-colored fridge now has a beautiful floral wall decal on it, and its top is now home to a collection of vases and a new ikea lamp instead of a horrible collection of things I did not know where to put.

I hung new curtains and created a matching backslash (with the left over fabric and a glass picture frame from IKEA (can you tell where I went this past weekend?)

AND.. the best change of all, gained a foot and a half of counter space by insisting we store the dishrack under the cabinet when its not in use. A bowl of fruit and some indoor herbs look way nicer than that stinky rusty thing!

I walk into the kitchen and sigh because I love it so much, instead of walk into the kitchen and sigh because it is an ugly mess.

Sure, the floor is kind of dingy and tile is a strange pink shade, but its much better than when I started.

The #1 thing I'd change about my kitchen is the nasty linoleum floors. (I'm moving next month and my landlords are planning to replace them for the next tenant... grr.)

I'd also do something about the pantry, which is a decent-sized closet with a narrow door so there is a lot of space hiding in the corners, and shelves that don't reach the front of the space. I suspect that if it were torn out and replaced with a normal sized pantry, there would be room for a dishwasher.

I did make two changes that were really valuable - I put cup hooks over the sink and built a wine glass rack into the bottom of the cabinets. Having my mugs and wine glasses out looks pretty and frees up a lot of cabinet space.

I just realized that I should have fixed another thing that has always bugged me - the low cabinet where I have my pots and pans is next to a perpendicular wall, and the door opens the wrong way, so it blocks easy reaching in. I also could probably have hung a pot rack in front of the window. Smarter luck in the new apartment, I hope!

The linoleum and/or the counters. Both are stained, old, and once upon a time were white- yet are now far from it. The counter is so chopped up that it warrants full replacement- not just a few butcher blocks of disguisal as I have placed over the worst chopping marks.
The linoleum also manages to stain from everything. I drop a blueberry, and even if I wipe it up fast, there is a little discoloration. Its very poor quality linoleum and is probably 5 years old at least.

The only thing i really wish I had was a double basin sink.

1. A cooker hood that works (since kitchen is part of an open plan living area)
2. Improved lighting for the work area (under the cabinets). Come to think of it, as part of the cure I'm going to remove the vestiges of the el cheapo "fix" the property agent put there to appease me
3. Cupboards that don't have "overlapping" doors so the right one has to be opened first.
4. A better way of dealing with adaptors (since we're living outside our home country and our appliances don't fit the local sockets)
5. An oven that (i) Doesn't take 2 weeks to heat to operating temperature (ii) Doesn't lose 50 degrees within a nanosecond of the door opening (iii) Has more than one shelf inside
6. Better distribution of the sockets so that the work areas are "de-bottlenecked"
7. Fix the problem of the smell from the toilet in the apartment upstairs (comes into our kitchen)
8. Find a way to make the cupboards smell less

These are just the "priority" items!!!

EVERYTHING!!!! But for starters, would be nice to have some proper kitchen cabinets & shelving.

Double sink... more cabinet space... And I wish it was in the front of the apartment so we could have a window. Also an updated fridge.

My fridge, stove and dishwasher are from 1989... Do I need to say more?