While researching yesterday’s post on the comeback of wood paneling, I was delighted to discover this beautiful remodel of a kitchen from the 1960s. Homeowners Bret and Mary Peyton did a great job of updating the kitchen while keeping the design true to the home’s midcentury roots. Take a look.The wall between the kitchen and the dining room was removed, which really opens up the space.

At last night’s Apartment Therapy design meetup, we heard from Frank Potash (aka Mid-C Frank), whose quick — and very dramatic — kitchen remodel was featured on the Kitchn a few years ago. Before, the kitchen was clean and cozy, but a bit generic. Jump below to see the after, and a floor plan of the changes.Check out the full tour at The Kitchn to see how Frank re-did his whole kitchen with Ikea cabinets — in just five weeks.

This couple wanted to create a space in their Upper West Side apartment dedicated to displaying and enjoying wines. While they didn’t have a lot of kitchen space, they did have this under-the-stairs closet, ripe for transformation.The homeowners were connected with Ecostruct, a Brooklyn-based design/build firm, through TheSweeten, a service that aims to connect New Yorkers with design professionals for renovations of all kinds.

What do you do when you’re living in a small studio apartment, but don’t want people to be able to see your bed immediately upon walking in the door? Apartment Therapy reader Christina was faced with this particular dilemma when designing her friend Ann’s apartment and decided to get creative.

This NYC apartment kitchen got the job done. But there were a few things about it that irked — the L-shaped layout blocked part of the window, and there wasn’t a lot of storage space. The appliances were outdated, and the laminate cabinets had seen better days. Plus, the whole room just felt, well… little. What to do?Can you believe it’s the same room? Architect Nalina Moses removed the sink cabinet that was blocking access to the lower part of the window.

The makeover of this Brooklyn living room wasn’t just for aesthetic reasons; the homeowners needed more organized, out-of-sight storage, and a space that was kid and cat friendly. They also wanted to incorporate a small piano, and be able to watch TV without the television being the focal point of the room. To do this, they turned to New York design firm Mercer Interior. Check out the results after the jump.

In a small space, just a few changes can make a big difference. The owner of this Brooklyn Heights studio knew she wanted to update her kitchen (and add a dishwasher!), so she turned to designer Sarah Zames, owner of Brooklyn design firm General Assembly. Under Sarah’s guidance, a few small updates came together to make a big impact. Check out the finished product…Ta-da!

You may have seen the kitchen in this West Village apartment, which got a modern update courtesy of designer Carly Yates. One of the apartment’s bathrooms also got a much-needed facelift. Check out the transformation after the jump.This bathroom renovation is all about the details. Lots of clever choices keep the room spacious, modern, and very functional. From Carly: The large and light feeling of the bathroom was achieved by wall mounted fixtures that allow the tile to flow underneath.

Aesthetically, Jane’s kitchen wasn’t her cup of tea, but it wasn’t in bad shape. The real issue was the lack of functional storage — and the lack of a vent hood, which meant that every time Jane cooked anything it would set off the smoke alarm. Yikes. Enter Brooklyn-based Famurat Builders, who Jane met through The Sweeten, an online resource that connects New York-area homeowners with architects, interior designers and contractors.

When Billy and Sally bought this 775 square foot apartment in the Fort Greene area of Brooklyn, it had a few of the less-than-charming features common to many NYC area flats — badly worn floors; a tiny, cramped kitchen, awkwardly separated from the rest of the space. With the power vested in them as new homeowners, they decided to do something about it, embarking on an inspiring renovation that shows just how much living you can do in a small space.

Back in 2008, when Ainsley Ryan and Chris Showalter bought a fixer-upper loft in a former Ex-Lax factory in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill neighborhood, they commissioned an architect to design something a little unusual — an OSB-clad ‘pod’ containing a master bedroom, a bathroom, and a little nook for their infant daughter.

If you’ve ever lived in an apartment, this ‘before’ picture might look a little familiar. In fact, I’m pretty sure my very first rental had the exact same wood-trimmed cabinets and white laminate countertop. But when Brooklyn residents Mark and Erin bought their own place, they decided it was time for an update — one that would make their outdated kitchen more beautiful and more useful.

8-year-old Jake had been sharing a room with his older brother until the family decided it was time for each of the boys to have their own space. Their home had a small office that might serve for a third bedroom… after a few little adjustments. Okay, maybe a few big adjustments. Jake’s parents wanted a place where he could sleep, play, study, and host sleepovers — you know, kid things — but the room’s small footprint made this a bit of a challenge.

The ‘before’ version of Marie Clare and Peter’s Park Slope townhouse was not without its charm. Marie Clare and Peter fell in love with the house, but had a few changes in mind to make the space lighter, more open, and the perfect home for their small family. To find the perfect contractor for their project, Marie Clare and Peter turned to The Sweeten, a NYC-area resource that connects homeowners to architects, designers and contractors.

Sometimes it’s the little things that make the biggest difference — and this simple but innovative small-space solution is the perfect proof of that. West Village homeowner Franz loved his small studio apartment, but not the lack of storage space. So he came up with a plan to add storage, without sacrificing any floor space, and found a contractor to help him make his plans a reality. You can see a layout of the studio here. So, not a lot to work with. Franz’ idea?

When Sarah, an editor at Vanity Fair, and her husband Michael, a writer for Bloomberg News, bought their home on the Upper East Side, they knew the kitchen could use a little work. Their apartment, which dates back to 1910, hadn’t had many improvements since then. The kitchen, in particular, was a strange mish-mash of styles: the upper cabinets, original to the apartment, were beautiful, but riddled with wood putty spots and pockmarks from the past 100 years.

Is this the worst kitchen you’ve ever seen? Well, it may not look like it. But behind its benign, if somewhat bland, appearance lurked a dirty secret… a really dirty one. Mouse poop. Rob and Liz, the homeowners, were only using about 25% of their cabinet space, thanks to these uninvited guests. Additionally, the kitchen was freezing in the winter — standing in the right place, you could actually feel a breeze blowing across your feet. Lovely.

Erica and Spencer’s one-bedroom apartment in Windsor Terrace was just the right size for the two of them — that is, until two turned into three, and they started thinking about finding a little extra space for their growing family. As luck would have it, they found the perfect place without even having to move. After discovering that their neighbors’ 750 square foot apartment was on the market, they quickly snapped it up and set about combining the two units.

A lot of people remodel their homes right after (or right before) moving in, but by the time Kyle and Angela decided to take the plunge and redo their kitchen, they had been living in their Clinton Hill apartment for 11 years. They had a lot of time to save, and scheme, and they knew exactly what they wanted: more counter space, a more open floor plan, and a kitchen with a little bit of midcentury style.

Brooklyn homeowners Ben and Therese described the style of their old bathroom as “Hilton bathroom gone wrong.” It felt cramped and outdated, and the molded tub and beige tile just didn’t match their style. They both knew what they wanted — a modern, functional space that would reflect their personal tastes — but they weren’t sure exactly what that would look like. So they started doing research. Lots and lots of research.

Before her renovation, the kitchen in Sanaya’s Clinton Hill co-op wasn’t much to look at. But the issues with the kitchen went far beyond appearances: the cabinets were falling apart, and cans of food were holding up shelves in some places. A well separating the kitchen and pantry made both spaces seem small and cramped. It was time for a change — time to tear everything out and start anew.

After 10 months of searching, Alison and Jovito purchased the home of their dreams: a charming 100-year-old brownstone in Brooklyn’s Ocean Park. There were lots of things that needed updating all over the house, but they decided to focus first on the most egregious spots: the upstairs bathroom and the very, very, brown kitchen. We’ll leave it to Allison to describe the extent of the former kitchen’s ickiness: The kitchen needed a gut renovation.

This kitchen before and after is a little different from our usual fare because it doesn’t involve a change in style: it involves a change in function. Blaise, Kristin, and their three kids had just made the move from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Their new home was almost twice as big as their previous one, but the kitchen, they found, was prohibitively small. They loved the way it looked, but they didn’t love storing kitchen basics in the basement and pots and pans in the oven.

Kitchen trends will come and go, but some things never go out of style. If you want a kitchen that will stand the test of time and still look as beautiful twenty years from now as it does today, consider incorporating one of these seven elements. Just for fun, here’s a gallery of 1920s kitchens. Even though these kitchens are nearly 100 years old, you’ll spot some of the same features in the modern kitchens below — proof that these elements are truly timeless.

Washington Heights homeowners Pepper and Marshall were thinking about combining the two bathrooms in their two-bedroom co-op into a single, much larger, bathroom. But they changed their tune when they realized how much the combination would hurt their home’s resale value — and how much additional money and time they would spend moving all that plumbing around.

Although they originally thought about combining the two baths into a single much larger one, budget considerations prevailed, and they decided instead to keep the bathrooms separate and make the most of each. Here you see ‘before’ pictures of bathroom #2 — if you missed the first one, you can witness its transformation here.

This is Marissa’s old bathroom. It’s certainly not the worst ‘before’ we’ve seen here on Apartment Therapy — but beneath its bland, dingy-80s exterior lurked a nasty surprise. The previous owner of Marissa’s co-op spent a lot of time away from home, and didn’t realize that leaks were causing extensive water damage. On top of that, the random dropped ceilings were making this tiny space even more claustrophobic. It was time for a change.

Ok, so here’s a fun one. I know you guys love seeing transformations that involve entire rooms, and especially entire apartments, and this ‘before’ was particularly bleak. It’s not the worst we’ve ever seen, but it is a perfect example of the kind of soul-deadening blandness that afflicts NYC postwar apartments. In addition, the homeowners, who had just moved from a two-bedroom, were expecting a new addition.

This is an especially interesting project because it shows how an older home can be adapted for the needs of a modern family without sacrificing the things that made the home charming to begin with. The owners of this Eichler home home in Mountain View, California were in love with the home’s midcentury detailing… but not with the midcentury floor plan.

Homeowners Shannon and Scott loved their home, except for one problem: their two-story house didn’t have a bathroom on the first floor. This was particularly annoying and inconvenient for Shannon — at home during the day with their young daughter, she found herself constantly running up and down the stairs. So Scott and Shannon turned to architect Andrew Mikhael, who identified a spot where they could add a bathroom, without adding to the home’s foundation at all.

At 50+ years old, this vintage bathroom was starting to show its age. The sink and tub were pitted and dented, and since replacing them would mean subbing in new tiles that didn’t match the old, vintage ones, the homeowners decided to go for a full remodel — and bring this aging bathroom into the modern era. Between them, these two homeowners knew quite a bit about interior design.

Warning/workspace/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/atmedia-cloudinary-image-block/atmedia-cloudinary-image-block.php82 If you’ve ever embarked upon (or even have just priced out) a remodel, you’ll realize that flooring is one of those things that seems like not much of a big deal but can actually add up to a whole, whole lot of money.

Claire and Mike loved everything about their co-op in a converted Brooklyn industrial building, except for the kitchen. In appearance it was rather inoffensive — not nearly as terrible as some of the ‘before’ kitchens we’ve seen on this site — but in storage ad counter space it was seriously lacking. Also, with its standard-height cabinets, the kitchen looked awkward and squatty in such a tall space.

After living in their apartment for twelve years, Carrie and Jack felt that the time had come to overhaul their bathroom. They’d tried little, inexpensive fixes over the years, like a new medicine cabinet and new lighting, but nothing made their bathroom feel any less cramped and, with grout stained by years of use and tiles replaced haphazardly over the years, just plain dirty-looking.

Heather’s Upper West Side apartment had a problem common to a lot of New York apartments, big and small — an outdated floorplan with small, chopped-up rooms. In particular, the galley kitchen was cut off from the rest of the apartment, not a great fit for the way people live now.

Dan and Mike made a great purchase that they’ve since gone on to make even greater: a one-bedroom condo in an old converted piano factory, in one of Manhattan’s most coveted neighborhoods. Although their apartment had a lot of things going for it, one thing that they didn’t love was the kitchen, hidden away from the rest of the apartment by a wall with an awkward passthrough.

When Megan and Ryan moved into their new place on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, they decided that renovating the bathroom had to be their first priority. Although, at a glance, their bathroom might not seem so bad, up close it was a bit of a disaster: a crumbling vanity cabinet, discolored and mismatched tile that had been painted (yes, painted) over, and a bathroom window that had been painted and tiled shut.

This is the story of how one Clinton Hill co-op got a complete, top-to-bottom refresh. The apartment had a problem common to lots of older homes: a small, cramped kitchen, cut off from the rest of the living areas. The homeowners, who love to entertain, envisioned a new, modern kitchen, and an open, uninterrupted living area that would take full advantage of the apartment’s incredible light and views.

A lot of the kitchen Before & Afters we share here on Apartment Therapy feature dramatic changes: new cabinets, new countertops, new appliances, walls torn down. But in this Fort Greene kitchen, the changes are much more subtle. They’re so subtle, in fact, that flipping back and forth between the before and after photos is a little bit like one of those puzzles where you try to spot the differences between the two pictures. Can you spot the changes?

The second bathroom in Michelle and Brad’s condo was in a strange state of flux. The home’s previous owners had removed the bathtub with the hope of installing a washer and dryer, but since the addition of the washer and dryer was rejected by the co-op board, the bathtub was instead replaced with a couple of awkwardly placed IKEA cabinets.

Shopping for real estate in New York can be a bit heartbreaking. Corey found this out the hard way when he and his partner put in an offer on their dream apartment, only to be completely outbid. They wound up instead with a perfectly decent Williamsburg two-bedroom, with lots of space and beautiful views. But the good-enough apartment lacked character, and they couldn’t stop thinking about the one that got away.

You may remember Ellen and Ben, the first-time Brooklyn homeowners who, instead of remodeling their kitchen, decided to tackle their master bath as their very first renovating project. Feeling more than satisfied with the results of that remodel, they decided to go with the same contractor for their second bathroom, although they elected to take the design in a slightly different direction.