apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

You can never have too many places to hang things up. Wall space is prime real estate in the tiny kitchen.

If you're on a serious budget the white plastic coated racks that are meant for hanging brooms and rakes in the garage make excellent pot racks, and they blend right in to the white paint of most rentals.

Also, those accordion-style mug racks are great for kitchen towels, pot holders, aprons, as well as mugs.

Where is the food storage? I only see dishes on the shelves. Also I'd like to hear from some realtors regarding resale value of kitchens with open shelving instead of cabinets.

Wow...I can't see the kitchen. All I see is that gigantic oven hood ! Way too big!

Yes, I agree with this post, if you get a 12feet ceiling, everything looks more spacious, even more so when you remove the top cabinets. But you get a similar effect if you have white top cabinets that continue all the way to the ceiling and light wood lower cabinets without compromising precious storage space. I would think hard before I removed any cabinets in a small kitchen. Making something look spacious doens't translate into a "lot of storage space".

This is a beautiful kitchen, great show piece. I am not sure about the red stools, they look as props, no one can sit in them and eat on the butcher block style kitchen. There is no room for your legs to go under the table once you sit. I "love" stupid details like that. I once went to a bar where the chairs where so high, that you couldn't sit bcs of this problem - what designer does that, and what owner pays for that....

how do you keep your dishes and things clean with open shelving? Every time I see open shelves I love it, but then the reality of if you ever cook or anything- those preciously placed items will be covered in dust and ick

Chaotic open shelving, mismatched appliance finishes, tacky and cancer causing nonstick pans, horrid red stools, dementedly oversized oven hood, cliched staging topiary and muddled overall feeling? No thanks.

My immediate thought on seeing this picture was "whoa, get that table (& stools) outta there." I would go nuts having to walk around that island all the time. I think mskk's got it down. Except maybe for the non-stick pans. (If they're good enough for Julia Child, they're good enough for me!)

I agree with brooklynjennie about open shelving. I had "open shelves" in my college dorm and my dishes were always so dusty. Lots of washing.

Oh, wow, I would never want to do open shelving in a kitchen, at least not a small one. In fact, I'm considering putting in an additional cabinet above one of the two we already have, because everything we store up on top of it(seldom used platters, 90 oz glass pitcher, etc.) needs to be washed of greasy dust before we can use it.

Open shelving is cute, but I'd rather be able to just reach into a cabinet, grab a bowl and *know* it's clean.

As a minimalist, I love the kitchen and agree with all the suggestions.

Upper cabs in small spaces do visually detract from the rooms available space. Removing upper cabs also spurs one to purge the unnecessary. If your dish-ware is accumulating dust on open shelving, perhaps you don't need it.

Hood is a bit large, but EFFICIENT VENTILATION goes a long way negate the open shelving grease concern...and lingering food odors in a small apartment.

Ample food storage space in lower cabs...or, for some dry goods (pasta, rice, dried beans, cereal, etc.) on shelving in hermetic sealed jars.

This style kitchen does force people to think and plan...something the general populous seems adverse to. I wouldn't own anything that I didn't want to display. No secrets, no hoarding.

Matching appliances is not a flawless idea. I've seen plenty of matched "stainless" appliance sets that look like rubbish. These may not match perfectly, but they all look like HIGH QUALITY appliances.

Boos makes a good butcher block table that can double as a prep island, adequate leg room as opposed to island doubling as table.

@MSKK - You see chaos in those shelves?!? Also, can't say for certain, but there seems to be only 1 nonstick out of the 8 pans. The 2nd black pan looks to be hard anodized aluminum. The other 6 - stainless.

TO THE NAYSERS - If you have pics of making a tiny kitchen feel large without these strategies...please direct us to pics!

also...there is a difference between design to live and design to sell.

While I wouldn't be quick to tear out good quality cabs, I would choose budget open shelving options over budget cabs any day.

The point of the post is to demonstrate how one can open up even a small kitchen, but some of the tips are impractical for people who actually use their kitchens to cook, rather than as showrooms for pretty dishes and pricey appliances.

I definitely agree with Anusha73's point about having cabinets that go all the way up to the ceiling (and painting them the same color). Mine are like that and it visually pushes the ceiling up and doesn't make my kitchen (about 8'x10x) feel any smaller. A pot rack is NOT going to make up for the storage you lose by replacing upper cabinets with open shelving.

And some of us are not into having a lot of stuff out on display all the time. Closed cabinets are less visually chaotic to me.

Finally, things stored out in the open in a kitchen definitely do accumulate dust and grease if they're not cleaned or used frequently. AND with open shelves, you have to worry more about how attractive your dishes are, and you have to purchase nice-looking storage containers. Too much money and effort. Overall, the idea is just not practical.

I will concede that open shelving works for me in part because I'm 100 percent confident in all of my kitchen tools, dishes, and glasses. All low-key and uniformly high quality.

But I would prefer to see closed cabs to a chaos of cheap tools and kitch.

For me, open shelving was a cheaper solution the prospect of dropping thousands on decent cabs. I might add, my low cost basis in an open shelving design positions me profit if a potential buyer agrees with the design, AND not worry about a whether or not a potential buyer agrees with an expensive cabinet renovation.

HOWEVER, as a veteran of several small commercial kitchens, I can say with pride that no chef would ever prefer rifling through cabs or wrestling a pan from the bottom of a stack to a within-reach, open layout.

The proliferation of the requisite array of kitchen cabinets is the result of 1950's marketing of the post-war American lifestyle.

I have resolved the cooking grease problem by installing a 900 CFM exhaust vent.

Dust hasn't really been a problem as I'm not opposed to cleaning an item if it hasn't been used in months. Items used month to month don't seem to have a problem with accumulations. Not sure why. Radiant heat? Persnickety cleaning of the rest of the house?

Well, I really like this kitchen (although I have to agree about Anusha73 about the height & comfort of the stools).

What a LOVE about the kitchen is the shallow shelving, as it makes the ideal pantry (I HATE deep pantries, and got talked into one by my husband and our kitchen designer). I would put doors on the unit closest to the stove, and expand it, thus limiting the open shelving (and distancing the open shelving from the stove, for obvious reasons...) and expanding the pantry area. You really don't need that much display space.

I really appreciate the counterspace in this kitchen.

Probably most of us here clean our items as well; I’m sure you didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Don't forget to take location, climate, and proximity of traffic, etc. into consideration as well as consider that not everyone can install exhaust vents in their apartment kitchens.

This post is certainly food for thought, but like all posts on all blogs, the suggestions aren't going to work for everyone. I don't think that means we're secretive hoarders who don't like to think and plan.

As the architect/designer of this kitchen, I want to respond to some of the comments and observations:

Since the stove is 6-burner commercial grade, there was a need for a large and powerful ventilating hood, the owner got a great deal on the hood as well as the stove, which is why their finishes dont match, but to my eyes, black and stainless steel go well together.

Open shelves vs cabinets- First of all, the photo does not show the fourth wall of this kitchen, which has a huge bank of cabinets that go to the ceiling, so there is ample cabinets which provide concealed storage. Open shelving is becoming a common request from my clients, and I believe the best solution is a combination of the two, open shelving for display as well for those items that users need multiple times a day and cabinets for all the utilitarian items that people need.

Does anyone know where those pot racks came from?

sfarchitect- Thank you so much for your response. You've filled in the gaps we couldn't tell from the picture! The kitchen is beautiful, and 2x the size of mine, lol. I've only got 2 usable walls, 1 is 6', the other 5.5', with a column in the corner between them. yikes!

I agree to open shelving in a kitchen. Here I store stuff that 'turns around' permanently like cups, vinegar and oil bottles, large jars for storing food which go into the dishwasher anyway before refilling or large tins for baking ingredients or spices which are cleaned easily. Whenever there is some space left in the dishwasher I put in an item from the shelves that hasn't been cleaned for a while.

And, yes, I invested in a very good fume hood (but not as oversized as the one shown above).

Additional advantage, if you have open shelves: you can hang pictures!

sfarchitect, I really like this kitchen. I'm not a big fan of open shelving (too high-maintenance cleaning wise for my taste) but I think the pot rack is a great use of space for a wall that is sandwiched between a window and range hood. Do you have any photos of the rest of the kitchen you could share?

Point taken - Not everyone can install an exhaust fan.

Didn't mean others don't clean...just that I ENJOY cleaning and have never seen a buildup of dust to an alarming extent.

Hoarding may be the wrong word. Squirreling maybe? I mean, it is easy to tuck things away in cabs and forget about them.

TO THE POINT OF THE POST
There was ample criticism on the open shelving and a general lack of additional tips on the topic of opening up a kitchen.

Here's some...ditch the counter top microwave. I've been micro free since '03. No regrets.

Consider a dual oven range (available in 30" size from JennAir and others) and ditch the toaster oven. The little oven efficiently toasts and warms.

Integrate a wine rack or cookbook shelves into a wall (between the studs - not knocking down wall). Close to 16" wide worth of wasted space on uninsulated walls. Haven't tried it myself, but love the idea.

Try a dark trim on a light wall.

Use mirrors. Don't see that much in kitchens.

I love this kitchen though am surprised to find there's a whole other wall of cabinetry. I'm taking an L-shaped kitchen, shifting a doorway to where a window is, and turning it into a wide galley. One side will have cabinetry and the other open shelving. Cabinetry on both sides, even if I wanted to spend the money, would just feel too claustrophobic for me so I really like the blend of both as shown in the above photo. I have 10x more kitchen stuff than your average homeowner, so purging is really tough since some supports my food-related business, so am even repurposing part of two hallway closets to use as an auxiliary pantry (will post pix when renovations are done).

banish as much stuff off the counter as you can. Banish banish banish.

Whatever it is you use, it's just as handy stowed away

hang as much stuff on the wall, on cupboard doors etc. as you can. Hang hang hang.

throw away old herbs and condiments.

toaster oven OR microwave. you choose.

drip coffee or stovetop espresso. bye bye coffee-maker (unless you LOVE office coffee)

stickblender yay.

food processor hooray.

unless you really bake, stand-mixer nay.

the knife block to the trash, magnetic strip for handy kitchen knives, steak knives put away.

and whatever you truly love: dishes, cookbooks, ripening tomatoes, fruit, pots n pans: display.

and that's about it for today.

this is a terrific kitchen

we have open shelving in our late 50s house and love it. some people are "visual" and love seeing what they want to grab right now, and others are of the "visual" school who don't want the clutter in their face and prefer to see uninterrupted rows of beautiful cabinetry. variety is the spice of life! i like the bright, informal and lived-in yet contemporary feeling of this kitchen.

I like the kitchen - and as far as storage, who says there isnt' a pantry closet conveniently located nearby for all the foodstuffs and additional storage?

As far as the stove hood: Notice the gaps between the stove and the adjacent wall and cabinets? That stove isn't a residential faux-commercial unit but a Real Commercial stove. Commercial stove installations require an extractor hood that covers 100% of the surface area of the stove because the stove puts out far more BTU's of heat than residential units.

How many people really need a commercial stove?

This kitchen looks nice, but I prefer closed storage, and I would never trade upper cabinets for two pot racks. It's just not an even trade of storage space. Plus, who keeps their pots in the upper cabinets?

*sigh* I wish I could do any of these. My rental is a galley kitchen, wide enough only for one person standing. All of the wall real estate is taken up by cabinets... no room for a pot rack :( And man are the cabinets ugly... before i moved in, they sloppily slapped paint on them, even over the hinges and hardware. But the landlord won't let me redo them correctly. Ah well. Someday...

Having lived in a 20's era studio apartment with it's original single galley kitchen with the stove in the middle of one long counter and no ventilation hood, even I had open shelving, actually a tall and wide upper cabinet to my left that had 2 huge doors on them and I had to duck around them to get into the cabinet and add to that, on the opposite wall to the counter was a boom closet that made that area a touch tight, So I pulled the pins and stored the doors in the walk in closet until I moved out (a rental) when I put them back and about every 6 months, wiped down the shelves and the inside of the cabinets and all the stuff I used daily or nearly daily stayed clean between uses, stuff I didn't use, they, well, got dirty. The facts of life when one cooks.

And I've said this here before on similar posts, even if you have cupboards and keep them closed stuff WILL get dirty inside them if you don't use them and that is in my current place which has a ventilation hood that I use, which may be how "efficient" the vent really is. :-) But then again, the kitchen has no window for additional ventilation either and is in a 60's era kitchen.

In an ideal world, I'd probably have a combination of open and closed storage, racks or grids for pots and pans that can be hung, crocks near the stove for cooking utensils and I do keep my toaster and my coffee pot on the counter as I use them daily and I keep my knife block and cutting boards at the end of the counter where the sink is and yet I still cook in my little double sided galley kitchen and it works for me. the blender, mixer etc are on the top shelf of the pantry where I keep all the dry and canned goods and that is also where I keep the microwave oven too.

It's all in how you use space IMO.

Nice kitchen! I love the colorful stools. I agree open shelves is a risky move but if your a tidy type with nice looking dishes, pots and pans it's a nice look.

This is a beautiful and functional kitchen. The kitchen in my first place was even smaller than this one, offered less storage and I would have been over the moon to have it as well appointed as the one pictured above. While I undertand some may be turned off by "lack of storage" perhaps needing to pare down is more the issue.

Nicely balanced kitchen. Not your usual run of the mill design. I probably would use a smaller table in the middle, but in general I really like it. It feels right to me.

I agree with Anusha73 about running the cabinets to the ceiling - using lighter (white) cabinets on the top and darker cabinets on the bottom. At least that's what we're aiming for with the renovation of our small kitchen:

Existing: http://17thandriggs.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/renovation-diaries-getting-the-ball-rolling/

Dream white cabs: http://17thandriggs.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/if-i-envision-it-dreamy-kitchens/

Lighting is also very important in making a small, apartment size kitchen feel bigger - we don't have a ton of natural light in our space so we will be adding additional recessed lighting in the ceiling as well as undercabinet lighting. (By the way, if you're a renter and can't make any major changes, undercab lighting is something you can do easily and cheaply with simple kits from your hardware store.)

That said, while the kitchen above is lovely, I'm with those that are more drawn to the closed cabinets in general - although if I had a kitchen that was large enough I would be happy to have a few well placed shelves to display some decorative items or pretty dishware.

I like this kitchen a lot. What type of range it that? It's beautiful and probably costs more than my whole kitchen budget! I'm trying to do something similar with floor to ceiling cabinets on one wall so that I can get rid of the uppers on the opposite wall to make it feel more open. Just a few open shelves for everyday and pretty things.

I dislike the exhaust hood but what bugs me most is the gaps on either side of the range--that would be a nightmare to clean in my house.

The rule for open shelves is only put the things there that you use a lot, put other things behind doors. That's what we've done in my kitchen and this minimizes the dirt accumulated by baking ingredients, bakeware, pantry items, etc. while allowing me to quickly grab plates, glasses, cooking utensils and pots/pans as I need them, which never get greasy because they are being used almost constantly and therefore washed every 48 hours or so, if not more often.

I'd go crazy opening and closing doors to get at this stuff every day, instead of just being able to grab things from shelves! We don't even have our flatware in drawers, because none of the drawers in our kitchen were wide enough to accommodate the divided wicker baskets we already had for this purpose, and it's so much easier to just grab knives and forks from where the baskets sit on top of a counter-height bookcase (part of our open-shelving system) than opening and closing drawers all of the time. We're actually planning on moving our kitchen to a different room of the house (which means we don't need to worry about a temp kitchen while the work is done) and when we do I'll do the same thing: open storage for what we use constantly, other things behind doors, and the flatware in easily accessible baskets in a central location, with drawers reserved for stuff we use less often or that are unsightly (boxes of ziplock bags, aluminum foil, etc.).

In fact, I don't actually feel like I need more or different storage in the new kitchen--the move is to get more counter space, a bigger range and bigger sink, plus a place to eat and better natural light. Storage is one of the few things about my current kitchen that's not a problem!

I'm not quite sure what's wrong with having an island in the middle of the the kitchen......it's a common and practical layout.

I have 100% open shelves and no exhaust fan. I only have dishes that I love and use all the time. Mugs and glasses store upside down away from the stove. Plates and bowls are right next the stove, perfect for grabbing quickly and serving. Never an issue with dust/grease because they are always being used. I enjoy looking at them.

I would however, prefer to have the lower cabinets closed in (mine are open), as the pots/pans are not used as frequently and is a bit more challenging to make them look good.