apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Mine is 9 1/2 feet long by about 8 feet wide, and that includes the dining table (counter) with people seated. But there's still more or less 3 feet of space on each side of the dining table between it and the counters/fridge. And nearly 4 1/2 feet between the other side and the chair sticking out of the office closet.

It's small enough to feel cozy, but large enough that even with nearly a half-dozen people milling around, there's no issues being at the sink, stove, in the fridge, or walking about.

I just need to make better use of my cabinets.

I love the way your kitty is facing the camera as if to say "you see what a small kitchen I have to put up with?"

Mine's 8'x10' with a fridge and stove on one side, sink/counter on another and the other two walls have buffet/island things, both with counterspace. It's perfect for us. It's the two extra pieces of furniture that give us the workspace to have two people doing prep work at the same time.

I live in a studio that is 20'x20' and half of one wall is my kitchen. It really would be nice to have more storage and counter space. But it is amazing what you can do with small spaces.

For such a little kitchen, yours is really cute! Darling picture of your mom too.

Our kitchen is pretty compact, but it's well-designed and efficient. Plus, it's open to the rest of the loft, which is awesome:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/visualingual/2437958951/in/set-72157594505190197/

It's sort of funny to me that you want a larger kitchen. The last two apartments we lived in had really large kitchens, and it drove me crazy -- too much walking, inefficient flow, etc. I really wanted a condensed workhorse of a kitchen next and feel so lucky right now.

Although I marked "too small," the problem in my kitchen is more accurately that the space is both small and poorly designed. The stove is directly next to the exterior door and its top (the part with the clock) lands just above the window sill behind it. It blocks part of the counter space so that I have to reach over the stove to get to the microwave (I have to put the microwave there because it is the only place in the entire kitchen with a grounded outlet). The microwave door lands right in the middle of a stove eye (which accounts for the burn on the corner of the door). My counters have stuff on them (coffee maker, utensils, crock pot, wash rack), so its hard to create enough room to chop, mix, etc. on the rare occasion I get my act together enough to cook. As soon as I pull anything out to cook, my available space is immediately overwhelmed. I have one, overflowing utility drawer where I put my cooking utensils. I added a metal shelving system with a plastic top to provide me more counter and storage space, but it still isn't enough. The space makes me anxious and even less likely to want to cook. The kitchen is the only room in the house I have absolutely no ideas for improving other than gutting it and starting over, something I absolutely cannot afford now.

My name is taritac, and I hate my kitchen. *sob*

Thank you for allowing me to vent.

My kitchen is 7' x 20'. The counters are in the middle with a foyer at one end and a sitting area at the other end. I am having it painted white. Every square inch. It is beginning to look like an art gallery. I don't want to put anything into it except art on the walls. I have wainscotting, so the 56" rule won't work. How do I hang frames over the molding? Should the bottom of the frames be the same, say 3 or 4 inches above the trim?

wainscoting-I knew that.

My studio apt. kitchen is 100" x 80". Unfortunately, it's just a kitchenette, with no real stove.

It's about 10x8, but five adults are all sharing it. It's tight quarters.

in my last kitchen I couldn't even fully open the oven door. it was very narrow, but also had a lot of storage.

my current kitchen is much larger, but it's an awkward square shape. there's very little counter space but nowhere to put a table without it being really in the way. plus, where the stove is, only one person can be near it.

My apartment is a conundrum. Lots of walking space, but no real counter space...http://www.flickr.com/photos/wendypants/2611687743

At some point I had two fridges because the big one only worked as a freezer. That problem was solved, but there's a lot of maneuvering involved in cooking. It's like a dance. This IKEA chopping block table has to be cleared off CONSTANTLY...http://www.flickr.com/photos/wendypants/2630402416/

It's made me enjoy cooking more than when I had a huge galley kitchen with tons of cupboard and counter space. That's life!

Your mom is so cute! I want her outfit.

The size of my kitchen is just fine, but the cabinets suuuuck. There isn't nearly enough storage space considering the size of the kitchen, and no room to add my own free-standing storage. Plus the builder used that terrible late '80s early '90s laminate cabinetry so I'd like to drop kick him.

The size of my kitchen is probably quite perfect for a 2 person, 1 bedroom apartment. What isn't perfect is the SUPER old, peeling, dirty cabinets that are all slotted to let in outdoor air - thus making it more dusty and dirty. And the lack of counter space since the cabinets come down over the counter with about 2 feet in between, and no overlap on the part of the counter.
It's a nightmare to try and chop or mix anything, since you can't fit anything higher than a toaster (not even a coffee pot) beneath the cabinets.

sigh.

My kitchen is 9' by 11' but it's mostly open space with a very small usable countertop area. An island in the middle might help, but I know I'd always be running into it. If I have a lot of prep work, I use the adjacent dining area. In a way, I like having a small space to work with. Everything is practically within arm's reach. And I have plenty of storage -- I don't even use all of the cabinets.

my kitchen is so small two people cannot pass each other in it. If someone is at the stove, they literally have to leave the kitchen in order to let somebody else through to the fridge.

However, this is very common in Paris - which is due to people mostly cooking and shopping everyday for fresh food, opposed to stocking up in one big grocery trip, making the need for space to store alot of food negligible.

My kitchen is really small and is really a part of my living space. It is one of those Aceme all in one kitchens. I have learned to make it work. I do have a cart on wheels that helps when I need more work space etc.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aliciaphoto/2224247849/in/set-72157603808870141/ - this is my kitchen when we first moved in
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aliciaphoto/2962194821/in/set-72157603808870141/ - and we added all of this to the left wall (and painted!) but it's still tiny!

My kitchen is 9 x 11, which I consider pretty spacious. There was little countertop space when we moved in, the one 9 foot wall has a sink in the middle with counters on either side, oddly L shaped at one end to meet the stove, but as that is where the only outlet is, the microwave went into that corner. What we did was to get a chest freezer and a small countertop height "party fridge" instead of a full size tall fridge, and put them along the other short wall, as a kind of countertop, which more than doubled the workspace in the kitchen, and allows tow people to do food prep at one time

that was "two" people (not tow)

The kitchen in our 1905 house is tiny and I'm certain it's not original to the house. It definitely appears to be an after thought and its design is terrible, but we manage! The stove is next to the wall, with the refrigerator on its other side. The door to the deck is immediately to the side of the fridge. When the door to the fridge is open we can't walk through the kitchen. Luckily there's a small closet area that we're using as a pantry, but there's no way to solve the counter space issue!

As far as kitchens go, mine is pretty small. Tiny, in fact. But in relation to my apartment... my 280sq ft apartment... the kitchen is freakin' HUGE! So while it is small, I wouldn't want it to be any bigger in this apartment.

I have a 100 sq ft kitchen. I wouldn't want any less, even though is just 2 of us living here. I would love to have a nice big pantry and not only low cabinets where everything gets lost. Oh and a huge freezer. We do lots of batch cooking here!

Here you have it, fourth pic (although you can see just a bit of it): http://www.wetakeiteasy.com/2008/10/talk-about-tuesday/

The kitchen proper is hard to define as its an open plan loft but I would say its 14'x7'. I have no complaints about its size.

A link...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/liquidstereo/491232603/in/set-72157600195882099/

I always figured the bigger the kitchen, the better, just as a product of living in (increasingly) larger kitchens with every transfer/promotion my dad got... then, into early adulthood, I moved to RI with my partner so he could attend JWU. Between his culinary studies and our bizarre little kitchen, I finally figured out that if one person is cooking, what you really want is the smallest kitchen you can possibly manage.

In that apt, frex, we had a kitchen that was about the size of a walk-in closet. (No, I'm not kidding.) Maybe a bit longer, and fortunately a window at the end, but on the whole, about 6.5' wide by about 6' long. Countertops ran along both sides, with tall upper cabinets, and the sink at the end under the window. (The fridge and stove were in the quasi-dining room, about ten feet away.) Basically, one person could prep to his heart's content with no effort, because everything was literally within arm's reach. Then carry it all out to the stove, and cook. Done. (Plus, I had excuse not to go in kitchen. Yay!)

I hated the kitchen we had when we lived in a townhouse. Not only was it about 10x12, it was so atrociously and inefficiently designed... no more "stand in one place and reach everything." So second time buying a house, I went for the smallest kitchen I could find... and then ripped out the avocado and made the working area even smaller.

Out of 9x13 kitchen, the main work area is about 6x6, and on the other side of the island is the traffic pattern. It's just about perfect. Fridge, stove, sink, all major drawers in lower cabinets and pots hanging overhead? All right there.

You ask a professional chef, and they'll tell you: the less you travel to do what you want, the more you can get done. This big-honking-kitchen for chefs is bogus. That's just for people who want to look like they cook fancy.

After having had many kitchens large, small and medium I would choose medium. A large kitchen makes for a lot of cleaning more floor and more reason to spread out. I don't think anyone who cooks would enjoy and very small kitchen.

I agree with you, k02 - do you have any pictures of your current layout? We're contemplating the renovation of a 10x17 kitchen and my instinct is to huddle the working bit at one end of it.

Our kitchen is 9'x9' which seems like it should be fine, but it was so poorly laid out by the developer that turned our building co-op. The space includes a closet for the stacking washer/dryer and there is so much wasted space in that closet that it used to make me want to cry. I live with another grown-up and a 2.5 year old who wants to be in the kitchen helping me. I keep kid on a stepstool and have to scooch him back and forth along the only workable counter space in order to get into the fridge and garbage and away from the stove.

Fortunately we have bit the bullet and hired an architect to re-work the whole apartment to make it more livable since we'll need to be here for a while yet. I am excited for what will happen with the living space, but I am beyond excited at the idea of having a kitchen that I can be in with the rest of my family.

My kitchen/dining is about 8.5 by 12 feet. This is pretty big compared to the norm here (Hungary) and one of the reasons I love my tiny flat. It's nothing special, but visitors always comment on what a nice kitchen I have!

The real estate listing said our kitchen was 13'x7' but failed to mention that 4 doors or doorways opened into it, and that the basement stairwell took a good 4 foot chunk (not to mention the doorswing space needed to open the basement door... right into the fridge!)
Though some aspects irritate us (see photos and notes below)we find it great for cooking, for the reasons given above: all the work zones are concentrated around the stove.
We do have plans to improve it: remove basement door and rotate entrance to basement by 90 degrees, then scoot fridge farther from stove and put counterspace between them.
In a world where money was no object, would we blast out the rear wall of the house to build a bigger kitchen? No! But we'd blast out the rear wall to relocate the stairs to the basement and bring light into the basement!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deborahmcp/sets/72157610704158729/

Mine is teeny – about 9 x 4ft (I can place my hands flat on opposite walls) and I can easily touch the ceiling.
Thankfully I can use the dining room for storage as well. The fridge lives in there and there's also a chest of drawers for kitchen tools and crockery and a butchers' block for recipe books and wine.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36685999@N07/3381447301/

average-sized yet digustingly icky nasty nyc galley kitchen that we renovated (and sealed up every crack with spray foam....no bugs! we had some issues...) a few years back...

not big but we installed as many cabinets as possible and it feels pretty roomy. the room is wide enough so that we could run a 12" shelf along the entire right wall. it allows me to keep my 2' of counter space on the left totally cleared for choppin' and cookin' and whatnot.

it's not normally this clean...this was right after we finished the reno:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kdkaboom/2124644609/in/set-72157606056205748/

btw, after three years we finally installed a light fixture.

Our kitchen is 12 ft x12ft. Sounds palatial compared to some of the others here, but it is nearly unusable. First of all it has a picture window on the south wall with no cabinetry underneath. On the north wall it is open to the dining room - so it only has a couple of low cabinets (classic for a bar, but no bar). My special needs toddler loves to throw things out of the cabinets he can reach, so I keep nothing in those cabinets. The West wall has a huge opening towards the entryway. Only the fridge goes on that wall (blocking some of the picture window). This leaves me one wall for cabinets, and guess what, that wall also has a large window - into another room.

Two architects had been to this space but they could offer me a remodeling plan I liked, and they themselves were not happy with the results. Heck, my house was architect-designed and this is the only inefficient space in it. Eventually I will have the money to improve it somewhat, although I doubt it will ever be perfect.

firebird, could you use the childproof latches on the low cabinets?

kdkaboom, those cherry floors are gorgeous.

My kitchen is bigger in some ways than my first apartment's kitchen (which was just a wall of cabinets and a breakfast bar), but less efficient. The lack of any pantry space is what kills me - my last place had a huge pantry and I've never downsized appropriately. We hung some wall shelves on the one open wall over the kitchen table and this has helped somewhat. We have a small stove and only a few bits of counterspace for prep work.

My kitchen is 9x6 and I love it. It makes for an extremely efficient work triangle. I recently bought a full-size stove & fridge (21cu/ft maybe) and they improved the look of my kitchen over the tiny stove/fridge that were there when I bought the house. I also have high ceilings and the cabinets go all the way up so I have more storage than I need in there. Also, my dining room is about 14x14 so I can entertain.

Your mom is a stylish and beautiful lady!

5.5'x7'. On the plus side, I can stand in one spot and do anything from it.

My kitchen is long and narrow. It actually has a good amount of counter and cabinet space in it. The sink, stove and fridge are all along one room, and on the other side is an island-ish like counter space that has a pantry and a place for stools. For whatever reason, the place where you can put some chairs/stools is inside the kitchen, which makes them rather impractical since nobody can really sit there while someone else is doing something in the kitchen. Also, you would think that they would have put some more cabinets underneath it.

Over all, I think mine is a good size, though I'm not terribly fond of the layout. All it needs is a little bit of updating and I think I'd really like the place, sadly it currently looks like an 80's kitchen (when my condo was built...).

I love cooking so a giant kitchen would be heaven for me and my chef boyfriend. Im ok with the size for me living alone, but the cabinet organization is terrible. I actually have to crawl into my cabinets to get things out of the corner units, and the upper cabinets aren't deep enough for an average sized dinner plate.
I'd rather a better organized smaller kitchen perhaps, but a bigger better kitchen all around is my dream as soon as I get somewhere that I plan on living for 2-3 years or more.

my kitchen was 7 ft long and 8 ft wide, with a walk in 4 ft by 8 ft pantry off of the main kitchen, making the kitchen workable for my family. We are working on the kitchen now, making the old 8 ft by 8 ft dining room (that was nothing more than a walkway for us as we didn't use as a dining room) part of the kitchen area. That will make our kitchen 8 ft wide and about 15 ft long. We still need to do a bit of demo on the one door so we can incorporate the pantry into the kitchen area. It works for me, but only one person can really cook at a time as the floor space is only 4 ft wide.

We put our dining room in the old living room-the old owners had 2 living rooms within 8 ft of each other. They were old, maybe they used one as a sitting room and the other as a living room?

i don't remember the size, but like taritac, mine is poorly laid out with the dishwasher too close to the stove and a "corner cupboard" with a door that barely opens and the counter and cupboards closest to the dining room (which is MASSIVE), don't extend to the end of the kitchen wall - meaning i have limited cupboard space.

if the cupboards went to the end of the kitchen wall and the dishwasher was on the other side of the sink, despite the size, my kitchen would be perfect!

Love my kitchen -- I DID design it, after all! (Well, I modified the original builder's design.)

Ceramic cooktop (black to blend with the verde butterfly granite) built into the corner at an angle with oven below and microwave with fan above. Cupboards for dishes between the stove and the door into the dining room, with pan drawers beneath. Cupboards to the ceiling for food and hot pads and so on on the other side of the stove, with drawers for silverware etc. and base cupboards beneath. The counter run ends with a floor to ceiling pantry that matches the cupboards, for food and small appliances. Next to that is a broom closet, and next to that the door to the garage. That makes one L.

Opposite that L is another, with the refrigerator around the corner next to the door to the dining room (and therefore one or two steps from the stove). One section of cupboards overhead (for mugs and glasses, next to the fridge) with the dishwasher underneath, then the sink built into the counter overlooking the living room. Just past the sink, the counter turns inward to make a wide work surface and eat-on counter with drawers and cupboards underneath which hold the trash and recycling bins. (No wall or cupboards over the sink or wide counter -- open concept...) One of my favorite parts is the pet cupboard built under the cantilevered end of the counter, facing the broom closet. It's a cabinet meant to go over a fridge, hung high, leaving an area of floor underneath for pet dishes. They are handy in the kitchen but you don't trip on them.

On the other side of the eat-on counter, in the space leading from the garage door to the living room serves as a breakfast nook (Actually a kind of hall, with the kitchen area's only window to the outdoors, and a small table.)

Blond maple Shaker style cabinets, verde butterfly granite (dark green), multicolor 2 inch slate tiles on the diagonal as the backsplash, green and brown slate-look vinyl tiles on the floor, stainless appliances, recessed lights... Light red oak in the adjoining floor spaces... Mocha brown paint on the few segments of wall that show (mostly around the broom closet and garage door.)

So the two L's face each other to enclose the space, with one gap being the door to the dining room and the other gap at the end of the wide counter leading to the garage in one direction or the breakfast nook and on into the living room in the other. The cats and house rabbits love the race track of dashing around the loop, thru the kitchen, thru the dining room, into the foyer, down the short hall to the living room, thru the breakfast nook area -- it takes much longer to write that than to run it! Altogether I think the outer dimensions are maybe 15x12 or so, not counting the cupboards etc. Floor space about 10 x 8, maybe.

Mine is 9 x 16, but a bunch of doorways make the usable space 9 x 12. It's plenty of space, but the layout is not very efficient.

Mine isn't a separate room at all - it's a fridge, electric kettle, and a toaster oven on one side of my 300sf studio apartment! Needless to say I don't cook much, but it's amazing what one can do with a toaster oven if necessary.

visualingual: your kitchen is much larger with counter space than what we're working with; we literally cannot stand in the same space while cooking...we've bumped into one another while doing something as simple as moving a pan to the sink. Handling knives and forks in such a small space isn't even an option. From what I can see, you enjoy about twice amount of space as we have...just the amount I'd be happy with :)

Did anyone read this article by Mark Bittman in the New York Times?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/weekinreview/14bittman.html?_r=1

Who needs a big kitchen, anyway?

6' x 9' here, except one square foot is taken out by a bump-out, so we lose a corner of storage/counter space (our hot water heater is in a closet on the other side of the wall). the kitchen is small, which could be fine and efficient, but it was poorly designed. cabinets are too close to counters to hang storage rail thingies, too low to mount the microwave above the stove, cabinets don't go all the way to the ceiling, have a wall w/ bizarrely small cabinets (like 6" wide) so the counter space there is pretty useless, too. and it's ugly 80's laminate everything w/ the restaurant kitchen reddish brown tiled floors. whew. vent over :) at least my husband and i can both cook at the same time. but we have to communicate constantly to avoid running into each other (watch out, right behind you, i'm opening the oven, watch your head, move, etc).

i loved a small galley kitchen i had in a previous apartment. tons of cabinet and counter space make all the difference! (btw, agree that visualingual's kitchen looks like a gigantic dream kitchen to me!)

I'm with taritac - thank you for giving me a venue to vent about my small, poorly-designed kitchen. I love this site, but most of the kitchen solutions are totally beyond the realm of possibility given what I'm working with. This leaves me yearning for a larger and/or better-designed kitchen (someday - I'm hopeful). Any other tips/tricks for dealing with storage in tiny kitchens are welcome!

Gregory - I have exactly the same problem - two people cannot fit. No "two bums" here. My kitchen has 32"x45" of floor space (think: bathtub-size); wall-to-wall it measures 80"x45". Just measuring that gave me a bit of catharsis. On the left is a fridge, 12" of counter, and a stove (mercifully, with 4 rings & an oven beneath); on the right is a sink & 24" of counter space. Opening any of these precludes access to the kitchen (the fridge, the dishwasher - you aren't getting in or out til it's closed). The kitchen is sorely lacking shelving or storage - the oven and dishwasher (not my choice - I rent) dispense of all lower storage except for the cabinet under the sink and three very narrow drawers I use for cutlery and assorted kitchen doodads. There is limited cabinetry above - two 9" wide cabinets (!?), one three-shelf cabinet that holds my limited supply of crockery and glassware, and two broader 18" wide single-shelf cabinets that hold food (relatively high up - above the fridge/stove hood). The microwave, which only fits on top of the fridge, effectively blocks access to one of the food cabinets, and the pots/pans live on top of the microwave. I frequently store food in the fridge because it's the most efficient place for it. There is one major saving grace in my kitchen: my apartment has relatively high 9-foot ceilings, and since I'm tall, I have repurposed the area above the cabinets as extra storage (when I had a roommate, this drove her nuts) - so the kitchen is at least confined to the kitchen. I've been contemplating adding a shelf, but the only place that seems possible is above the doorway. Oh, did I mention the tile on the floor is super-uneven?

All that said, I have managed to cook many tasty meals in this kitchen over the four years I've lived in this apartment. The tiny space holds a full sink, stove, oven, fridge, dishwasher, food processor, microwave, kettle, toaster, ... It's inoffensively white (despite mildly offensive particle-board oak cupboards), and I can see my tv/living room while I'm cooking. I've been thinking about mild visual upgrades, maybe a backsplash/ wall feature like this old fashioned metal look from Home Depot: http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10051&langId=-1&catalogId=10053&productId=100521697&N=10000003 90401 501624

I saw Bittman's video & story about small kitchens and felt slightly better about myself. Until I tripped over my boyfriend while trying to check the stove. Gah.

Hmmm, most of the kitchens here are nearly as big as my entire apartment. My kitchen is 44" x 42" (yes, that is inches, see it here) Fortunately, a previous tenant built a counter in the main room adjacent to the kitchen that holds the fridge and had a couple of drawers. Given that I choose the location of my home over the square footage, it is a sacrifice I am willing to make.

10'x15'

When I re-did the kitchen, I decided not to make it an eat-in. Instead, I created a U-shaped countertop, with LOTS and LOTS of storage all around (3 out of the 4 walls are outfitted with floor to ceiling cabinets). Wall cabinets go all the way to the ceiling, we installed pull-out pantries and really maximized the space.

I feel it's large enough ... I wouldn't want a larger kitchen.

Luna, would've emailed but no message options on this site, hunh. I've a flickr account, and while I don't have the floorplan up, you can at least see the damage in progressive stages:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pricklypear_projects/

(I believe I've got several floorplans as it progressed, and blogged about it, but I won't belabor that here -- email me via the flickr acct and I'll send you whatever I've got. Hey, if it keeps you from making the mistakes I did and undid, all the better, eh?)

12' x 12' with a kitchen table and chairs in the middle and an antique pine dresser on one wall - I wouldn't mind it being bigger but I'm also perfectly happy with the size it is.

my kitchen is less than 11 feet long (129"), and that's including the fridge and stove (both 30"). i can't even go wall to wall with the upper cabinets unless i block the window (1 of 4 in the whole condo), but i make it work. due to its size, only one person can feasibly use the space.

Mine is about 8' X 8'. I need a little more counter space.
One wall is stove/counter/fridge the other is Microwave on counter/sink/dish drainer and coffee pot on the counter.

so there is one bit of counter open to chop,cut or mix.

I used to have the real galley kitchen that required one person to leave so the other person could reach the fridge.
The side by side fridge that touched the stove door when they opened and the stove door only opened half way before touching the fridge. One entrance, no window, very claustraphobic. Although it was longish and had enough counter space, it was dark and hard to see in the cabinets.

I felt like decking a lady that told me she LOVED her Galley kitchen, then I found out that her galley kitchen was 15' X 20' .

Kitchens on boats are called galleys.
They are in the narrow underwater part of the boat.
They are tiny, and narrow.
Therefore a galley kitchen is a small narrow kitchen.

My current kitchen is not a galley kitchen. It is small. It only has cabinets on two side, However it has almost 4 feet of open floor between the cabinets. Not narrow at all.