For the entire series click HERE!

When we moved into our apartment the kitchen was tiny. I am talkin’ about giving the yellow polkadot bikini some competition in the itsy bitsy teenie weenie contest.  We had a small refrigerator next to an old stove on one side and a sink and dishwasher on the other side. That was it.
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Don’t let the photograph fool you, where the floor changes is where the apartment kitchen ended. That arrow is pointing to some drawers that we brought in.When we moved there were only 4 drawers total in the entire kitchen and they are so small that you cannot fit a flatware tray in one. Not even a European style Ikea one! So we had to cut one up to fit it in the drawer.

See, that’s SMALL. I thought about doing a photo comparison of the kitchen we left in our last house, but I didn’t want this post to be too depressing. However, if you want to see what we are downsizing from I do have pictures (or even a video) on here and it was lovely.

I am fine with keeping things simple though. I don’t need an extravagant decked out kitchen to provide some wholesome, delectable, decent meals for my family of 5, but more than two feet of counter space is preferred. So J and I decided to take a look at our floor plan and think outside of the box a little.


On a side note I stated earlier in this series that we had a 2 bedroom apartment. The den/office doesn’t have a door on it or a closet, in fact it’s the size of a walk in closet. I just wanted to clarify in case it looked like I gave false information. 

We had a space next to the kitchen that was considered the dining room. So if we ate in the “living room” (which I will explain later, I am not talking about tv dinners here) we could use the empty space to extend the counter and add storage. This would double the size of our kitchen, which is great because it’s one of the most utilized areas of the home.

I went through all of my phone photos from since we moved in, and this is just a little taste of some of the creations that have come out of our apartment kitchen.

and these are some of the people that I have to share it with.

That is why expanding our kitchen was so important. So much so that it will take a second post to talk about all the details. I’ll pick this back up tomorrow when we go from the kitchen that I loathed to a kitchen that I love.