Beginning kitchen renovation – the before pictures

I’m once again renovating my kitchen!  Yes, it’s been less than two years since I last renovated my kitchen but that was in a different home.

I love, love, love my new apartment!  But the kitchen really needs a major face lift.  Not just for asthetics, but for functionality.  The kitchen itself is a nice size though it currently gives a small impression and the cabinet space is very inadequate for our needs.  These are the basic cabinets installed by the contractor in all the apartments when the building was built fifteen years ago.

IMG_20150520_031944Wall number one.  The cabinets are very photogenic and look much better in pictures than in real life.  You can’t see the bottom of the doors flaking, smell the strong scent of mold when opening the cabinet under the sink, or see the toekick area that is missing the covering and as a result attracts lots of small cluttery items.  But even without all of that, this is still the entire working area of the kitchen.

I appreciate having two sinks even if they’re small.  Fortunately the faucet pulls out or I wouldn’t have a way to wash my large pots since they don’t fit inside!  Since I haven’t unpacked my dairy dishes for lack of cabinet space, having two sinks (one for dairy dishes and one for meat dishes) hasn’t been as helpful as it could have been.

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(End of Wall 1 where it meets Wall 2.)  Here is the corner of the last cabinet that you could see just half of in the first picture.  Doesn’t make it seem any bigger, does it?  🙂

The space that was allotted for the stove was intended for ovens that are the standard 60 cm wide.  Mine is 90 cm wide, which is why it’s parked at this awkward angle.  To the left of the oven is my temporary solution for where to store root vegetables that don’t need refrigeration.  Next to that is the edge of two large bins of kitchen items that can’t be unpacked due to lack of space.

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This is Wall 3.  We put a freestanding cabinet here to create some much needed storage space. It didn’t look especially good there but was extremely helpful until we sold it last week to make space to get started on renovations.

There you have it, the before pictures of my kitchen.

Stay tuned for more details about what we’re going to be replacing this with!

Avivah

4 thoughts on “Beginning kitchen renovation – the before pictures

    1. Thanks to Hashem’s amazing loving kindness, we were able to purchase our apartment. I wouldn’t invest in someone else’s kitchen – I’d just live with it!

  1. All agog – I’m glad, actually, that there is just the contractor kitchen – this way the “nice” kitchen you put in will be suited to your family’s needs and usage, and that, as you know, differs from family to family. This is just the “series” I need to get me through the summer – just about as much suspense as I can handle!! Thank you in advance!

    1. You’re cracking me up, Judy! 🙂 Suspense, indeed. 🙂

      I’m also glad there was just this super simple kitchen. I didn’t want to buy an apartment that was a higher price because someone else fixed it up to meet their needs. I kept reminding my kids when we were fixing it up in the first few days we were here that we needed to remember to be grateful for the repairs the apartment needed since if it had looked good, the price would have been much higher! And now we can make it look the way we want it to be.

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