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1.) No dishwasher/ability to have one installed. (My apartment in Germany lacked one. It wasn't the end of the world, but there were times it was darned inconvenient.)
2.) No pantry. My current home is the first one I've ever lived in that had one (the 'medicine cabinet' in my prior townhouse does not count, IMO). It's not a walk-in pantry, but it's a pretty decent size--about 2.5 feet deep and 3.5 feet wide. Now that I've had one, I always want one.
3.) I have found that I much prefer eat-in kitchens. My grandma had a kitchen and eating area that was essentially just one long room. The house I grew up in had a large room with an L-shaped kitchen that was large enough to put a table to hold a family of five to eat in. My current kitchen/eating area are listed as two separate 10 feet by 10 feet areas, but in reality, it's just one 20 feet long by 10 feet wide rectangle, with a U-shaped kitchen on one half and the eating area on the other. I like it.
4.) I dislike open kitchen concepts. I prefer that the only room the kitchen opens to is the eating area. I'm also not big on corridor kitchens, since they're usually too narrow for more than one person--however, a friend of mine has one that was actually wide enough that she and I could walk by each other with room to spare.
5.) My current kitchen/eating area is on the south part of my house. There are two large windows on the wall facing south, and a large sliding glass door on the east wall. As a result, that area is drenched in sunlight in the mornings, and I love it. I might have a hard time dealing with a kitchen that doesn't have that directional.
6.) White cabinets. Two apartments I lived in had white cabinets, and it felt like they were always smudged. Same goes for white appliances, too.
7.) More of a 'depends'--I'm not a big fan of painted cabinets, but it seems to depend on the color/shade used. I dislike whites, blacks, and grays, but I've seen some blues and greens that were very pretty.
Stainless steel and granite counter-tops. Or worse yet, stainless counters. I did m time in a commercial kitchen and escaped. No interest in going back.
To me, price fixes just about every negative. If I can get the overall house for a price that allows me to fix whatever bothers me in the kitchen, and the overall floor plan is good, I'll probably go for it.
That being said, I would be really turned off by the following, in no particular order:
1. Sink facing a wall with no way to really move it.
2. North facing, dark kitchen.
3. Totally open concept - I prefer a kitchen to be separate or at least partially separate from the main living area.
When we bought our house, our kitchen had:
1. NO PANTRY.
2. Crazy 1990s wallpaper.
3. Old, white formica countertops.
4. A stupid, weird built in island with a white tile top, that made it impossible to completely open either the oven door OR the dishwasher door.
5. A huge, white fridge that was "trapped" in the kitchen, probably by the island. Oh and it didn't match the other appliances.
6. A glass top, electric stove that I hated - I wanted a gas stove and double oven.
7. White tile floor.
8. Though the room had ten foot ceilings, the cabinets were hung low (this was a custom built home and the original owners were short) so many appliances wouldn't fit below the cabinets.
9. Golden oak cabinets - everywhere.
10. Some sort of crazy Colonial looking light fixtures.
11. A weird "peninsula" that cut the room in half, and a "corner" sink built into the peninsula, that wasn't under the window.
12. Not one, but two corner, triangular shaped cabinets - one with a lazy Susan - and both were huge space wasters that were actually counterproductive if that makes sense. I couldn't even put a box of cereal in one of them, and the lazy Susan had a huge amount of wasted space behind it - where, you guessed it, things would fall, never to be reached again.
In other words, it was hellacious. But that was OK, because the owners had apparently gotten enough feedback that they had lowered the price to allow future buyers to completely gut the kitchen, which is what we did. We totally changed the entire layout of it. About the only thing we didn't change was the actual walls of the room or where the stove and fridge went. Everything else, we ripped out and started over. We even ran a gas line so that we could buy a gas stove, and we added a double oven as well! Moved the plumbing so we could put the sink under the window. Tore out the weird peninsula thing, which allowed us to replace the island with one that was a lot more functional - we were able to move it down as well, and actually enlarge it which was nice.
I kept looking at the room and thinking "There is a lot of room in here. This is a big space. Great natural light. Tall ceilings that I love. Plenty of room for dining and cooking. Room for a pantry. I just have to imagine it completely empty and just start over."
The price was right on the house so we did it!
Complete gut job and it took a solid month to complete, but it was worth it. Great neighborhood, great floorplan, quality construction, beautiful setting, very pretty home overall - and now it has a fabulous kitchen that I love!
I’ve been poor enough to be happy to cook food if I had the means. First apartment didn’t have a stove nor refrigerator. I bought my own refrigerator (so cheap it wasn’t frost free). I cooked on a small hot plate, microwave, electric skillet, and toaster oven.
Wife wanted stainless steel so we got stainless steel. As long as they’re not the bold orange, yellow, and green of 60s and 70s appliances I’m fine with them as long as they do the job. One house I grew up in had a kitchen so small that only one person could pass at a time. From the sink you could turn around and take your clothes out the washing machine to put in the dryer. From the oven you could turn around and take the clothes out the dryer. We lived like that for nearly ten years. We adapted. Working stove to cook food, working refrigerator to store food, sink to wash food. That’s all you truly need. One of my homes didn’t have a pantry. I got a storage cabinet and that became my pantry. Left it in the house when we sold it. Sure if you can afford those things then that’s fine but when youre short on cash not much is a deal breaker other than price. Yes u buy the best home you can afford and make do with what you got.
Biggest deal breaker, well I have a couple, I hate open concept, and dark wood cabinets, and not enough windows. I am tired of seeing really dark cabinets in almost every home I look at. Unless everything else is light in the kitchen to me its depressing. I love lots of light.
I’m the opposite - we requested the builder change the cabinets to all black. Much sleeker looking and more modern. But the walls are white, the countertops are white quartz, and of course as with any nice house everything is stainless steel so you have plenty of light colors contrasting with the only dark element and it looks awesome.
Deal breaker for me has to be something that’s very hard to change, so that might be a closed off kitchen or galley kitchen. It has to be open with one large living room / dining room / kitchen area. The rest of the house we are building is compartmentalized into rooms and separated properly, but it would just be weird to have closed spaces downstairs where we have lots of natural light and space to host gatherings and walk in and out of the back patio / pool / hot tub / fire pit area into the large open space. No benefit to that being closed off at all.
No pantry would have been a dealbreaker too. We already lived without this house and it was a nightmare, never again.
I am reading everyones' posts, and I said to my husband, "These are some really nice people but I would not be comfortable allowing them into my house. They would hate it." And he reminded me that I wasn't really thinking very positive today [ my favorite chicken died this morning. she would sit in my lap for hours every day while I worked on the deck on my computer]
When we bought our house, we did not have water [for 5 months] not even a septic tank. In our kitchen, there were old countertops [ projecting either 10 or 12" wide, I forget which] no stove, fridge, sink, definitely no pantry, and we did not have a contractor or the extra money to pay anyone to fix things up. We did it all ourselves[ not just the kitchen, the entire house] both being old and disabled, in our own time when money allowed. And we LOVE what we have done with it. We find it beautiful, and I think most people who come to our home agree.
I still have no pantry or open kitchen, or skylights,or kitchen island, or the roombig enough to eat in it[we have a seperate dining room, which we spend hours a day in] but I do now have a long list of "deal breakers" for my kitchen. These are mine.
It would be a deal breaker, if when I looked out the window as I washed the dishes, I could not look out of it and see my "post card pretty' gorgeous in all seasons, mountain view [we live in the mountains, on the side of a mountain] I do not have a pantry in my kitchen, but at the bottom of the mountain, above the garage, is my canning kitchen filled with hundreds of canned jars and room for hundreds more.
It would be a deal breaker if I did not have a basket of the best tasting eggs from our pastured chickens sitting on my counter. It might also be a deal breaker if, when I opened the fridge if I did not ussually find a huge jar of sweet, raw, goats milk from my beautiful nigerian dwarf goats [ this breed is known for having the best tasting milk in the world]
It might be a deal breaker if it did not have the hardwood floor it has. Or the funky crown molding, that we are fINALLY almost done repiring.
It might be a deal breaker if I could not walk a few steps out of my kitchen, then out the entryway, into my potager garden filled with the intoxicating fragrance of all of the herbs and flowers.
It might be a deal breaker if we had an open kitchen, because we are an Autistic family [most of us] and even though all of the immediate family here [and those staying long-term with us] can handle, and even enjoy the cooking smells, we often have visitors who can't. Having a closed kitchen keeps the smells from permeating the rest of the house and causing pain to our guests.
so, when I first started reading all of these posts, besides feeling a little inadequate, I also was incredulous at the ammount of "needs" people have for their kitchen. Then I realized that my list is longer and more encompassing than anyone else who has posted. This thread has helped me to be thankful for having a kitchen more incredible than I could have at one time imagined.
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