First, it would be a little easier to make suggestions if we had more pictures--what's opposite the window wall, what does the couch wall look like? What do you want to be able to do in this room? Watch TV looks like a given, but what else? Entertain friends, read, surf the net (on what, desktop, laptop, tablet?), play video games, listen to music, eat snacks, eat meals, do hobbies or crafts? Do you need a home office space? More storage? Does that wall back onto your bedroom, or the neighboring apartment? Off the top of my head, how about a sleek Mid Century Modern credenza? Put the TV on top and then you have tons more storage inside. Or a new, larger TV stand, flanked by bookcases. Gives you a place for all the electronics associated with the TV, plus more storage. Or a nice, new TV stand, plus a desk, bookcase and file cabinet for a home office. If you are really short on storage space in your apartment, I'm a big fan of the great wall o' storage. Look into bookcases that come with optional doors, and put three or four of them along that wall. The Ikea Billy system is one example. Add some doors to hide some of your stuff, so you don't have to be super neat all the time. Use bins or boxes to hold other stuff--bookcases are not just for books. The Ikea Expedit is another option--comes in a variety of sizes and shapes, so you could easily work the TV into the design, and has doors and drawers that fit into the cubbies to make them more useful. It's going to be difficult to fill that entire wall up with art or a mural. You need a little bit of furniture on that side of the room, so that the room looks more balanced. When it comes to artwork, I'm in the school of "live with the blank wall until you find something you love." But not everyone else is. I'd check out Apartment Therapy for some cool ideas on DIY art. I've see chalkboard walls, plywood art, all sorts of things that might spark your imagination.

You might check out some of the "tiny house" websites to see what is discussed there. Beyond that, I'll offer the following suggestions. Fridges -- me, I'd probably go with a standard top freezer and just deal with having a fridge that is 26 or 28 inches wide. From the reliablity/durability surveys of members of Consumer Reports, it seems that pretty much all major brands of top freezer models run about the same problem rates these days. Summits are rather more expensive than the more readily available brands. The size/capacity to get depends on budget and what kind of tenant you expect to have. A friend who leases out a small cabin (350 - 400 sq. ft.) here has had good luck with a 10.7 cu. ft Kenmore. I believe the unit is made by LG for Kenmore, is about 24" wide, and sells for around $400. It has been in his rental for a bit over three years with no problems. If you can go a little wider (27") , there's a Frigidaire/Kenmore model with a 14.5 capacity for slightly more ($430, I think). Several friends got them for their rentals. One friend bought one for his own small house about five years ago. No known issues apart from them being very basic, cheap fridges. On the 18" dishwashers, somebody else will have to help. On the ranges, there are only three or four manufacturers. The Summit stoves that you've seen actually are made for Summit by Brown Stove Works. Brown has had factories in Tennessee and North Carolina for decades. It mostly makes ranges for rebranders including Summit. While Brown makes line of pro-style ranges under its Five Star brand, it's products mainly seem aimed at landlords looking to minimize investments. (I think I read somewhere that they do a lot of business with operators of subsidized housing projects.) Also, have a market in folks who want to replace a defunct a 36" wide, four-coil burner range in an old fashioned kitchen that they do not want to remodel. The coil burner models are very basic, old fashioned units. Price varies from cheap to not so cheap varying with the burner arrangments, with whether the oven doors have windows or not, and with whether or not you get a storage drawer. A second player in this market segment is the Illinois-based Peerless Premier. These models are carried by the likes of Home Depot and Lowe's and various online vendors. My recollection is that the Peerless ranges are priced a little higher than GE/Hotpoint. I've only laid hands on their small gas ranges (which seemed pretty cheesy), so I can't speak to the quality (or lack of it) in their electric models. The GE models are probably your best bet for quality and durability. GE makes one 24" model that has radiant smoothtop with a self-cleaning oven (runs somewhere between $650 and $900 depending on where you buy it) and four coil-burner models which are sold as plain GE and under GE's Hotpoint brand name. They are priced a bit above and below $500 depending on whether you get a window in the oven door and whether you get a storage drawer. GE/Hotpoint coil-burner ranges have had a good reputation for durability and ease of repair. Amana is a Whirlpool brand. Don't know if Whirlpool still makes the small electric ranges in-house or if it contracts them out (maybe from Brown?). I kind of recall that the Amana coil burner was actually even smaller than 24-inches, maybe only 20 inches wide. It also is sold under the Danby brand name which out local rural hardware store carries. It sells a few every year. (Ours is an old mining town turned ski resort where some of the old houses are very small and, obviously, so are their kitchens.) If you are really thinking of induction, you are going to be limited to cooktops (of which there a few induction models under 30") and a wall oven. However, that combination sounds like it might be out of the budgetary question. Can't help with stacking washers and dryers. Some friends have them but I don't recall enough info to be of any help here. Sorry.

My experience in outfitting a smaller kitchen in a rental property of mine a few years ago is that there seem to be two levels of appliances: cheap and nearly disposable or spendy out of all proportion to the size and features. :-s One quick note that Kenmore is a Sears brand built by other manufacturers. We did buy an Avanti range for that rental property as a fill-in until we remodeled -- and replaced it with a standard-width range in the remodel. The Avanti had trouble fitting a standard broiler pan and there was no landing spot for hot pots on the top as there would be on a 30" range, so sacrificing half-a-foot of counter space was not as big a problem as one might think. The bigger range also had a broiling element in the oven and a storage drawer on the bottom (the Avanti had the broiler on the bottom), so we got some storage space back there, too. We had room for a 16-cubic-foot refrigerator but no room for a dishwasher. The only experience I have with an 18" DW was in an office break room, where the Frigidaire there worked only as well as the equivalently-priced full-size Frigidaire (that is, nothing to write home about). You may want to consider whether a dishwasher is worth the effort in a setting like that. Or splurge and go for the Miele. My $.02.

I like the first choice too, but I admit I prefer warmer tones. The last is what everyone is doing, predictable and certainly wouldn't be a mistake. Here's the thing that you should know before installing the counter. I would take the sample that you choose and look at BS tiles. It seems like this would be so simple, but I can't tell you how many people install the counter only to be stuck with finding a coordinating tile.