I'll play!
Here are a few 'before' shots of my sweet kitchen. Doesn't even approach hideous :). The man from whom I purchased the house was in his 90s. He and his wife raised three children here. No dryer, only a washing machine. Floors impeccable - my neighbors tell me he never allowed anyone to wear shoes in the house.

I love the direction my remodel has taken. However, I admit to feeling sheepish for wanting more function and openness than the family original to my home had!

ICF, in honor of the terrible photo you posted re: necessity; I've included a link below: "The High Price of Materialism."

Entrance to Original Kitchen as staged by sellers (looking South):

From Original Kitchen
From Original Kitchen

From the other direction (looking north):

From Original Kitchen

I love the original sink. Tried to incorporate, but ended up removing it and waiting for inspiration to re-use (outdoor potting table/sink? In new bathroom, if I ever do it?)

From Original Kitchen

Here is a link that might be useful: The High Price of Materialism

I loved our new kitchen when we bought our new house in 1980. I was a little wary of the carpeting there, but it hid everythig:

The first thing we did was replace the carpeting with hardwood in 1990. We also replaced the hardware:


In 1995 we removed the cabinets over the bar, replaced the sink, faucet and countertops, refaced the cabinets, and had cabs built around and next to the refrigerator:

This area was one of the prime reasons we remodeled last year, but not the only reason:

It was the only path through the kitchen and if you were getting something from the refrigerator you were out of luck.
We are extremely happy with our new space:

BalTra, I'll bet some awesome meals were prepared in that cute little kitchen! Reminds me of my MIL's kitchen. Kind of makes you wonder why we need bigger, grander kitchens anyway.

Are you in Baltimore?

Yes, Mercy - I'm in B'more. A transplant here from the west coast & I love it. You here too? The house is unmistakably a Baltimore row home :)

I agree about the bigger and grander. Again, I love what is happening to the space and I love the openness with the wall between dining/kitchen removed. Still, sometimes seems absurd!

When I was growing up, we lived for a while in a mini-motorhome. (tiny little Lazy Daze, two kids, one big dog). My very best childhood memories from that time! We lived outdoors mostly, and could go anywhere we wanted on vacation and not need to pack a thing. All the dishes were the old no-break ones (in case one forgot to latch the cabs closed and plates went flying across the camper). It was great fun!

I am sure you are right about the awesome meals! The adult kids were at the closing and had so very many sweet stories and memories to share of growing up in this home. Great mojo here.

leela - happy to see your kitchen again. It is one of my first favorites on this site.

Here's our before. We bought last year and gutted it before we moved in. Pretty bad.

The OP apartment kitchen reminds me of kitchens I've seen in several cities.

ICFgreen, do you (or anyone) know how to describe it?
The oak handles are ugly (over time) but very practical.
They don't stick out.
In tiny kitchens this is a good feature.
There are none in the market today like that, neither wood nor metal.

Thank you for the split image illustrating real life in two different places.

Sas95, your old kitchen entices me to strap on my roller skates! Yours (and somewhat mine) doesn't always mean bigger is better. It would be fun to see what you end up with.

Aloha2009, this is what I ended up with:

Link to my almost finished kitchen thread

BalTra... Yep, I'm here in B'More too.... in B'More County, born and bred. Yes, I certainly recognized the style of the home. Most of our best childhood memories were probably not in big fancy kitchens, just tiny ones like your kitchen, but the meals that were prepared there were Oh, so yummy!!

Do you have pics of your kitchen reno? Maybe I've seen them already, just can't remember.

Here's a before shot.
Pay particular attention to the lighting.

an after shot

And below is a link to the full before and after slideshow

Here is a link that might be useful: Before & After Kitchen

OK, I have to share my pictures. They aren't really a before, because when the temporary kitchen is done, this room will be torn off the house. So I did the end to end pictures as well as focused on some of the artistic details in the room. I think they did a wonderful job if I do say so myself.

First of all, they loved the green floral border as well as the sunflower border. Since they couldn't decide, they chose to do both. They chose a lovely green laminate to tie in with the green border, painted the walls yellow and added a lovely checkerboard yellow wallpaper to some of the walls to tie with the sunflower border. That lovely backsplash...that's the new trend in today's kitchens, raw drywall, and let me tell you, it's a little hard to clean (ok, impossible), but for the look, I will totally deal with the inconvenience. And since they couldn't decide on cabinet colors, they did a thin layer of poly on the natural cabinets, chocolate brown oil base on a few, and then left a few white primer to lighten up the space. The floor is a semi-transparent blue stain on plywood with an accent tile of OSB painted with primer and brown.

When we moved in, all we had to do was add a woodstove, because there is no duct work, fix a few broken windows, added a spice rack, and cut a hole in the basement wall for the microwave. We've only had a few problems with the cabinet doors and drawers falling off, but I'm sure it's nothing a little duct tape won't fix. Now, on my behalf, we had just bought the place a few days before this was taken, and it was cleaned up a bit more, there are grocery bags thrown about and the countertops were a little messy, but really, it looks the same, just a little cleaner.

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Since we just built a new house, I can only share the before pictures of our previous home. A large arts & crafts home. Lots of beautiful elements, but unfortunatly the kitchen wasn't one of them. These are pictures before we moved in in 2001. Sorry for the poor quality of the pictures.

Check out the ceiling fixture, it pulled down on a cord. The counter on the right was only about 24" high.
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This was a pantry where the dumb waiter was located.
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Don't you just love the wall heater, and the hole in the wall where they retro fitted a dishwasher.
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The swining door goes to the dining room.
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We tried to save the "hood", but just wasn't meant to be.
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Schmeltz, I'm mesmerized by your photos. Seriously, I keep scrolling back up...counting dangling electrical cords--6! It takes the cake for "before" pics. The naked bulbs are for interrogation purposes, I suppose.

Wow!!

How fun. Mine had it's flaws, but it wasn't terrible. And good to keep it all in perspective. Thanks ICFgreen for the visual on our definition of necessity.

Anyhow here goes my before:

View from the dining room. The yellow wasn't bad by itself, however the previous owner painted the entire house that colour. I mean entire. I mean ceilings (see later photo), closets, everything. And though it's difficult to appreciate in these photos the (actually very lovely) oak floors have a very similar tone to them. Which leaves you surrounded in a very pronounced yellow, all 360 degrees.

General kitchen view

A few other things I disliked: the post growing out of the island. And the tile countertop. Just can't think it is ever actually being clean... all that grout. ick.

The ceiling, and a (mostly useless teeny tiny) pot light

And that's me on demo day. Catharsis. I've clung to that through the last few months ...

BalTra-Thank you.

mercy - nope, you haven't seen my finished kitchen . . .still working on posting in progress photos!

BalTra...Ok, great...looking forward to seeing your pics!

Introducing...ta dah... our old corridor kitchen with doors on each end. Now remember...these were taken on the morning before demo when we busted out our front wall and added in the new 12 foot space. Look for the beloved red Kohlersink which DH had to demand that I retire. Also note that there is a tape player here, for the day's recorded book. Blue tape on floor indicates plan for future pantry closet.

We redid the 1950s kitchen in 1977 to get this, which we were so proud to have made. Range is kiddycorner from thedishwasher putting doors into near-collison, but what could we do?

mmhmmmgood-It is funny you got catharsis hammering those tiles. I keep telling my husband "I don't care if we pay people to do the demo-I get first swing!"
Here's mine-slow work in progress with restaining the cabinets, but the cabinets over the peninsula are down:
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Oh, I will win this contest every time:

To bad you can't smell this one. Note the carpet that was glued to the floor. And normally wallpaper fades, not darkens. PO was a chainsmoker.

And many of you are familiar with "REDRUM". But the real horror here was when we realized there were NO STUDS in the wall behind the fridge. The wall was created using leftover flooring material nailed to the top and bottom plate.

Barbcollins, your kitchen wins for most in need to be renovated! Thanks for sharing.

My 1988 kitchen was not horrible by any means.

But I think my 2011 kitchen is oh so much better. And I am grateful for it.
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There were 2 things I really truly hated about my "before" kitchen:

#1 - all of that darn knotty pine...

and

#2 - The fact that the breakfast room and working galley-kitchen were so "separate"

There were other things I truly disliked (ugly fluorescent "box" light, impossible to get clean vinyl floor, ugly ugly hardware on cabinets, not nearly enough storage or working space, etc. etc.) - but the 2 I highlighted were the biggies.

SQ

I'll play, but it's a little scary and I twitch a bit when I look at the pics. From far away the kitchen didn't really convey the horror of daily life. I captioned the pics to give you a better idea.

That super shiny lacquer or stain or whatever was everywhere. It's important to note that DH and I did not commit this atrocity.