A City Kitchen Goes From Small To Sleek: a house log
As we previously mentioned, we lately enjoyed a whirlwind trip to New York City and back, the highlight of which was meeting our new nephew:
And while we were bonding with him in his parents’ vivid uptown co-op, we at last got to see their new kitchen in the flesh, after months of makeover magic on their part. See, John’s older sister Katie and her husband Martin had been living with their compact NYC kitch for too long, so they chose to move some things around and take their cramped space from wee to wow. Their former cooking area was simply one short wall with a compact old stove and a seen-better-days fridge. Here is the before for ya (yup, that is all the built-in storage they had- two bottom cabinets, one drawer, and a few more upper cabinets).
Of course there was no dishwasher (that is the stuff of dreams in Manhattan), but Martin and Katie soon realized that they could make that dream a reality by utilizing the empty wall across from their compact cramped kitchen and adding an whole L-shaped area of cabinets to their modest layout (thereby nearly tripling their storage space and creating a functional work triangle to boot. Here is the empty L-shaped wall (which used to include a now-relocated door to their bedroom) before the addition of some much needed cabinetry:
And here is the old kitchen all gutted and ready for a retake:
After using Home Depot’s kitchen planning service (simply like we did for our renovation last year) here is their lovely new after of a kitchen:
New taller upper cabinets add even more storage space, and relocating the refrigerator across the room allowed for a mini dishwasher to be installed, which is seriously the most remarkable perk in Manhattan. Of course the new stainless steel appliances and granite countertops have brought in endless value to Katie and Martin’s kitchen investment, and everything from the updated hardware to the gas stove keep the space feeling oh so sleek and current. We also enjoy that Martin and Katie went for a few glass-fronted cabinet doors (two on each side of the room) to keep things open and to break up all that wood. We adore the glass door in our kitchen since it nearly mimics a window and reflects tons of light, so we tell anyone who will listen that a few well placed glass fronted cabinets truly can be the icing on the kitchen-makeover cake.
So there it is. A metropolitan kitchen that gained tons of storage space, function, and straightforward-on-the-eyes appeal. Do any of you folks have a compact kitchen that you are thinking of expanding? Anyone considering swapping out some solid cabinet doors for a few glass ones? Anyone else in the city jonesing for a compact dishwasher like Katie and Martin’s? Let us talk.
