apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

did we see this recently on AT or did i see it on another blog?
either way, i love it and think they did a terrific job!

That's 36 sq ft of perfection!

awesome! good call on knocking down the wall to make more counter space. i totally agree with the smaller appliances. europeans know what we americans are just starting to realize...less is more!

Nice ideas. Agree with the two burners and smaller fridge - in Europe, you shop for food every day. I would probably keep the wall - living in a small place is challenging enough without having to sleep in the kitchen. Also, the half sized dishwasher might not be such a good idea - friends who have it complain that they end up washing pots by hand. The two of us have no problem filling a full size dishwasher at least once a day.

This is cute! But as a person living alone, I manage to fill up a full-size dishwasher on a regular basis.

How do Europeans have time to go food shopping every day?

Beautiful job, I love open spaces!
But you surely are not renting this apt. and allowed to do all this work?

My dream fridge.
I like the color/choice of wood for your cabinets. They are beautiful.

This is the coolest tiny kitchen ever! The wood is beautiful.

I'm really impressed by how much counter space you carved out of that area. I think it would be sufficient for most everyday cooking.

And you even have a display area for your pretty green dishes. So many nice details...

Great job!

"sort our recycling in TEN ways (required by German law)."

Wait, what? My Hamburg apartment doesn't seem to care about recycling. I dutifully take my paper and glass to the nearby recycling station, but even then they only differentiate between green & clear glass and paper.

"Our fridge is a standard German fridge… which happens to be the same tiny size Americans have in college dorms."

Wait... my fridge is also a standard German fridge. It's about five feet tall and 2 feet wide. Not a huge SubZero, but not what I think of as a dorm room fridge.

"How do Europeans have time to go food shopping every day?"

AFAIK, they don't. I shop weekends and sometimes on the way home. But if you're just stopping in to the store that happens to be on the way home from work, and it takes you ten minutes to pick up a few fresh vegetables, it's not really a time drain.

@Morfydd, 5 feet is a wee bit taller than my dorm room fridge, but 2 feet is definitely not wider! My fridge is probably 6 feet tall and at least 3 wide, maybe more. I wish it was smaller since it's just me, but that's a standard apartment fridge here.

Gorgeous kitchen, though I think I'd cry with only two burners. Especially if they were close together. Is that them off in the left hand corner of the first photo?

I was wondering why the wall looked solid in the demolition picture and went to the original site to find out that it is indeed solid drywall. That's crazy!

Wow!

Looks great! We are a two person household and it takes so long to fill the dishwasher. As for having to wash the pots: what a great trade for such a stunning kitchen.

What is the white thing under the counter facing the dining area? The back of the fridge or dishwasher? I love everything about the kitchen but that.

And for those of you complaining about filling up your dishwasher every day and having to wash pots by hand...some of us don't have any dishwasher for anything!

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madsarah, I am sure that some of you don't have washing machines, either.

madsarah, the white thing is the radiator that was originally there.

I like how they preserved the lower half of the wall and simply wrapped cabinets around it.

When I was in Europe, many homes (including my aunt's in Florence) had what we Americans call "dorm fridges." I loved being in Europe because I had so much more access to food on every street corner. I can only remember being in a big supermarket one time. The rest of the time I was in small markets and even convenience stores (which, as a rule, had exponentially better prepared foods than even most major grocery chains here). Anyhow, you don't need to buy so much at once because you can easily buy it every day (at least in many more urban areas).

i really like this kitchen a lot. but, where is the stove? is that it in the corner? seems like a really odd placement and a bit of a reach.

I have to agree with Bromelia, my two person household can easily fill the large dishwasher each day, and twice if we have company for dinner. Guess we could just eat out more with a small kitchen.

Beautiful use of the space - two thumbs up from me. The only thing I prefer is a larger fridge but that's mostly because I hate going shopping for food more than once a week.

If the rest of your apartment looks as good as your kitchen does, then by all means please enter the "Smallest, Coolest" contest. I'd love to see how creative you were with the rest of the space.

Love this...this would do it for me :)

And I was also wondering about the solid look of that wall they took down. Solid, thick drywall, that is cool, no framing required!

This is an incredible and so well thought out and bespoke transformation. It clearly changes the whole dynamic of your apartment, not just the kitchen itself. I love how cleverly you've stolen a few extra centimetres from the other side of the original wall, and how the countertop looks almost unbroken because of the inset hob (is that an induction hob?).

Incidentally, "European sized" fridges are plenty big enough, even if you don't shop every day, because we don't store every single piece of food in them, we store some stuff in cupboards or vegetable racks.

i love it!

the dishwasher is super cute. and if i were to ever own one ( we wash dishes the old fashion way in our house) i would love a small one like that

madsarah, yes, we are suppposed to be nice, not get into hysterical tirades whenever somebody has something we cannot afford.

ah, bromelia, sweet and caring as always.

that is a well thought-out small place. congratulations! taking out the wall was an excellent idea.

so far i have successfully avoided having a dishwasher, and i do not need it, not even with guests in the house. i really prefer not to stuff my (small) kitchen with appliances. i can understand that people would want them, but i do not miss having one at all.

Thank you, maike.

bromelia -- I agree with madsarah. I live in a two person household and the dishwasher fills up about once every two or three days, so a half size at most would have to be run every day.

Until you have a small space, stop commenting on how the person fixes theirs. The OP had a very small space to fit in an entire kitchen - a full dishwasher or full fridge would have taken up a lot of that space with just two appliances.

i wonder where you have been "observing", then.

:-D

Amazing work! It's not always fun trying to work with a tiny kitchen area, but you've done a marvelous job!! Great ideas for small spaces.