When you work hard to change the look of this:

Into this:

However, in order to get there, you have to go through here:

When all of your food is stored in an old metal pantry cabinet, that was covered in faux-wood shelf paper 20 years ago, and the only place it will fit is in the dining room.

When you have so little storage space in your kitchen that it takes you less than an hour to empty all of your cabinets and only really miss the silverware drawers.

Then, as you are emptying your lower cabinets, you discover that they had pullout shelves! Only, they were so hard to use that you couldn't actually put them out.

And when you remove a cabinet and finally see the box construction, 3/8" sides suddenly seem thick and you realize that, if these held up for 40 years, the cabinets you are buying will last a lifetime.

God, I love this thread!! Have any of you seen the HD commercial where the teenage daughter goes on a rant about the kitchen to her Dad, who all of a sudden takes a good look at the kitchen and starts thinking . . . she then walks by her Mom who's reading on the sofa and who, without looking up, flips her daughter what appears to be a $20?

Thanks for the laughs!!!

Debbie

Note the slick glass cutting board built right into the counter! Bet you wish you had one of those. Some clever architect in 1960 earned a raise and promotion for that one.

Quotes from BF and various visitors to my kitchen:

"Countertops? What countertops? Oh, you mean the 6 inches of space on either side of the sink?"

"Honey, I think I broke the kitchen floor...oh wait, it's just that one peel-and-stick tile that's detached from the floor but stuck under the oven."

"What color is your ceiling?"

"I love your black and yellow checkered kitchen floor!!! Oh wait, it's black and white in this corner..."

"Honey, can you hand me the hammer? The front of this drawer is coming off again. Get me some extra nails while you're at it. And do we have any duct tape?"

"What do you mean there's no ice? What about the stuff at the back of the fridge?"

melbeach - Hey! We have the same glass cutting board built into our (only) workspace! Ours has the signs of the zodiac on it. What clever and inspiring design details does your glass contain?

forgot 2
When you see the before photos on this thread and think, gee that's not as bad as mine."
When your kitchen was 5x9 and that is the best feature.

When you follow a trail of water pouring down the street and find that it originates from the second story in your home.

this is fun. Here are my pre-remodel (i.e. current) woes:

-When my oven is on, it heats up everything in the surounding cabinets to scalding temperatures. i have to wear gloves to search for a mixing bowl if i'm baking at the same time.
-However, that was better than now, a few months later, because my oven only works for one hour a day, as in, 10 six-minute intervals RANDOMLY spaced throughout a 24 hr period.
-My OTC microwave hood is so caked with sticky grease that I would never touch the bottom of it for fear my hand would be stuck there forever.
-Two of my cabinet doors have broken shear off (NOT the hinges, the actual wood part) by my son walking by and, I don't know, breathing in their direction.
-Every time my husband unloads the dishwasher, I threaten him with divorce as he has to stand RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY SINK AND 2 inches of WORKSPACE!
-I have to walk around a LONG peninsula to get to my kids' cereal boxes in the pantry. I just cannot spare the extra 13 seconds during the morning rush ANYMORE!!
-My refrigerator is louder than your worst dishwasher.
-yes, I, TOO, use my cooktop as counterspace - doesnt everyone?
-sometimes i even use the top of my fridge as counterspace.

LC

You know it's time to renovate when someone walks into your kitchen, glances around and sees one of your cabinets partially detached from the wall, a hole in your ceiling which hasn't yet been patched up after a leak in the upstairs bathroom had to be repaired via the kitchen ceiling, and linoleum which is so curled up at the base of the cabinets that it looks like you've started to rip it out...and they innocently remark "Oh, I see you're taking apart your kitchen, when will the renovation be done?"

"Ours has the signs of the zodiac on it. "

LOL Oh my! I can't decide if I want to be horrified or amused by this thread. Man. After looking at Basjnas kitchen, I guess I didn't have it that bad after all.

Happy kitchen redos to all of you!

"my oven only works for one hour a day, as in, 10 six-minute intervals RANDOMLY spaced throughout a 24 hr period."

lacuisine - it sounds to me like your oven may have joined some kind of Appliance Workers Union. Just be nice to it or it might try to recruit the rest of your appliances!

Divastyle - I am both horrified AND amused by this thread. We may have horrible wallpaper, buckling laminate countertops, almost no cabinets and a zodiac cutting board, but I am hearing things here that make me cringe! All of our appliances work, and work well (for cheap '80s stuff) and no one has come close to dying in our kitchen. It sounds like others aren't that lucky.

And, lest we forget, the worse your kitchen is to begin with, the better it will feel when it's done.

Cocktails, anyone?

Mel, I want your knobs for my new kitchen!

I preferentially use my cooktop as a prep area. The hood provides light as well as ventilation when I do onions. I'll actually miss that when I upgrade to gas!

>>> melbeach - Hey! We have the same glass cutting board built into our (only) workspace! Ours has the signs of the zodiac on it. What clever and inspiring design details does your glass contain?

Zodiac signs, hmmm. That says 1970 to me more than 1960. Maybe this isn't the original kitchen after all. I have little gold and black sketches of herbs - nothing so obscure as to date it. Do you know the date of your kitchen?

Mel - My guess on the date of the kitchen is Post WW-II but pre-good taste!

You may be right on the zodiac being a '70s thing. The previous owners / hack house builders "remodeled" before they sold the house. Most of it was done in a bicentennial "eagles" theme in (we are assuming) 1976 (the year before we moved in), but the kitchen wallpaper doesn't appear to have any hint of eagle, leading us to believe they redid this room earlier.

ya know - I've had the song "Age of Aquarius" in my head all afternoon. Is that maybe one of the zodiac signs? I'm not very up on these things.

Thanks for sharing that song. Yes, it's one of the zodiac signs (dunno which, but I'd pick something fishy).

...it's the dawning of the age of aquarius age of aquarius...."

* When half the cabinet doors don't close because the hinges are loosening from the frames

* When you have to walk half a mile between the sink and the fridge

* When you have to ask someone to get up from the dinner table and move their chair in order to open the oven door

* When you can't fit anything in between the countertop and the upper cabinets

* When the window is a single pane of glass (no opening) framed into the wall, going below counter height

* When there is mold growing on the water damaged acoustical tiles on the ceiling

* When your lighting is shop fixtures with the Romex stapled directly onto abovesaid acoustical tiles

* When someone screwed boards randomly over some of the abovesaid acoustical tiles for a completely unknown reason

* When the laminate floor is harvest gold and white with gold speckles, peeling up at the corners

* When the "wainscoting" is vinyl coated paneling

* When the garbage disposal switch gives a mild shock 50% of the time

* When two out of four range burners have to be lit with a match

* When, because of a lack of exhaust fan, every surface is coated with grease to which every clump of hair from our 100-lb shedding machine of a dog adheres with great precision

An illustrative sample photo:

I forgot to ask Muscat - do you still have the chrome grille that went over your kitchen vent fan? I'm searching hard for something like that to cover our modern ultra-quiet bath fan in our vintage remodeled bathroom!

>>> Mel, I want your knobs for my new kitchen!

Uhh... they're yours!

Fori, I have a bag of those, too, if you need more. Glad to help you... and help me get them the heck outta here!

When you leave the house for a month, expecting that your old "solid wood" "very custom" but 30 yr old cabs can be re-designed/aligned (a project you spent almost a year to perfect) to fit a new configuration and your carpenter calls you on your second day away to tell you that the wood is soooo old that it splits, stinks and is not worth the trip. (DD went to house and confirmed this with photos and nose) So then, you have to design an entire kit using the available elec, plumb etc but make it "new". What a trip, when you don't have a clue about cab design, color, etc. I did it in one month! 8 weeks later the cabs were delivered. All the wrong color! The rest goes on from there...

I had those in my first house...love those knobs! Are they chrome?

And, uh, Rainier...there's a colander stuck to your ceiling!

I have Muscat's vent in my bathroom (where it belongs). It's noisy, but sleek and aTOMic!

rainierdog-

this is the cover:
{{gwi:1921495}}

If this is what you are talking about, it is still on the darnned thing.....it'll be coming down for sure, but 2 years ago when I painted the kitchen, I couldn't get it off to paint around it, so it is stuck up there until the kitchen comes down :) If you are not just messing with me, you are WELCOME to it!!!!!! I could see something like it looking right in the right context, but not in my KITCHEN!!!!!

Are you in WA? perhaps near Mt Ranier? That was my favorite backpacking trip EVER!!!!!!!!!

when a realtor snidely comments to a friend calling about another unit that your patio home is the only one left that is "original."

when you realize that you no longer care that your pet parrot is chewing up the cabinet doors

when you tell your other friend, a polite sensitive and quiet man, that you are considering remodeling the kitchen and he blurts out "It's about time! I dont know how you stood to live in that place for so long!!"

when you tell your friends that your place is contemporary and they correct you rolling their eyes "You mean RETRO"

when you get tired of trying to rationalize the haphazard random walls sticking up in the middle of the kitchen/dining room from a previous owner who changed their minds in mid-remodel long ago

When you get tired of people saying "this place has so much POTENTIAL"

when you get tired of pretending that the partially refinished laminated oak doors on the nonrefinished painted white cabinets is a unique style

when you get tired of the large ceiling leak stain from the nonfunctional leaky shower upstairs

when you realize that your appliances arent worth more than $300 total on Craigslist and that in fact you may have to PAY someone to cart them off

when you finally realize that this kitchen style may NEVER come back in.

when someone remarks that the kitchen bath counter looks like something made in wood shop

when after extensively cleaning and bleaching of your kitchen cabinets and appliances after moving in, you still feel like they are "dirty" 3 yrs. later

>>> I had those in my first house...love those knobs! Are they chrome?

After scraping off the green mystery film, they do appear to be chrome underneath. If you're really really serious, you can have them after I rip it all apart.

Hey Fori,
I added those knobs to the bathroom vanity here to replace the white cermamic with painted flowers knobs the p.o. had put on. They were really cheap at HD and look nice installed. I think they have a quirky retro look.
So, at least one person understands you, lol.

Ah, Fori, ROFLOL! The colander is actually hanging off a pot rack you can't see the rest of. No, really; I didn't forget to add "kitchen objects mysteriously adhere to ceiling" in the list of reasons I chose to remodel my kitchen.

Alas, my old cabinet knobs are goldtone. Well, artistically peeling goldtone.

Muscat, yes, I'm not hallucinating, I would LOVE the vent cover. In fact, I'd take the whole unit just for kicks. Let me know when you're ready to toss it my direction. Actually, I grew up in Seattle (currently in Utah, proving the point that you never know where you're going to end up). 12 years ago, my 1st husband and I couldn't agree whether his name or my name should be put on our sole email account and our black Lab, Rainier, won.

Sorry for the OT!!!

Well, in my case .. I assume 1964 was good for something .. unfortunately it wasn't good for a DIY pine kitchen, with black wrought iron looking knobs and hinges.

I have just about finished my remodel and I'm amazed at how tall and wide my new cupbaords are. Maybe the original owners were short? Or was that the way they built them then?

I was wrong about my bathroom fan...it's not quite the same. Things look a lot dirtier with the flash, don't they? I'll have to take pictures of my kitchen, but I have to clean it first....

ranierdog- it is yours! It is really filthy. I bought the house 3 years ago, and have tried a few times take it apart to clean it, with no success. I have no idea how long it has been there. We'll try to pull it out without damaging it.

when you get tired of pretending that the partially refinished laminated oak doors on the nonrefinished painted white cabinets is a unique style

LOL, Jennye, I thought I was the only one... oak laminate doors over refaced maple frames. Not contrasting, like you see in some high-end kitchens, but, "Oh, well, it's close enough that maybe no one will notice they're different."

And a new one: when the shelves in your base cabinets are oven racks, installed so they can slide out...

bump...do you need a chuckle? Read this thread! Add to it! (I'm thinking up my list now!)

Ranier!!!!!! I'm so sorry- I have been delaying this for a couple days cuz I feel like a dolt. I forgot to salvage that fan. I didn't realize until the next day. And it KILLS me, since i was so trying to waste as little as possible!!! Sorry :(

> When the vinyl floor tiles look exactly the same after you scrub them - & you KNOW they were filthy.

> When the cabinet/counter consists of a giant sink from the 1930's.

> When the lumpy ceiling above the giant sink flows like a water fall when the toilet waste pipe above it breaks. Apparently, there had been minor leaks before that caused the lumpiness & someone had 'patched the ceiling' with a wad of old fabric prior to mudding. I think it was a skirt!

We didn't get a new kitchen - it was a rental house & we moved.

Our remodel was a "we might as well do it now remodel" that started when the dishwasher and electric cooktop broke the same weekend. We knew the fridge was dying soon and that any new fridge would mean that the cabinet maker would have to enlarge the opening and change the adjacent pantry door. The cabinets were 20 years old and looked great (just needed a change of hardware). We knew that eventually we wanted to move the sink out of the island and put in under the kitchen window where it "belonged" and that that would mean some changes in the cabinetry too. So, since we wanted to keep the original cabinetry, we figured we needed the same cabinet maker to do the work so we better do all the work now before he died or retired. Since we were moving the sink, the counters needed to be changed, hence the nice new granite. While we were at it, we decided the cabinet maker should make panels for the new dishwasher and fridge. Then, how could we change all that and have an obviously 20 year old wall oven (although it worked). New combination wall oven and oven/microwave on order. Since we were moving the sink and getting a new sink and faucet, we decided we might as well put in the instant hot. That required electrical and plumbing work, too. Of course the new oven requires an electrical upgrade too. Since we were doing that, we might as well have the electrician bring the house up to 200 amp service. Since we were changing the counters and I didn't want a granite backsplash, we needed to repaint the kitchen and get a new tile backsplash. Our "might as well" remodel (caused by a broken cooktop and dishwasher) replaced everything but the floor and cabinets. (Although we had some cabinetry expense as noted above) Our "might as well remodel" cost around $20,000 which we were not planning on spending at this point, but...Anyway, I love my kitchen now and thank everyone for all the gardenweb help through the years. I got help finding a wonderful pullout copper faucet (to match the original copper hood), found out about my built in soap dispenser and Never MT,instant hot, pull out garbage, granite edges(you guys gave me the nerve to do a straight edge on the perimeter and ogee edge on the island), you guys also gave me the nerve to go with my absolute black counters which I love,and the thought that I could change the dimensions of my island countertop. I also learned about convection cooking and combo microwaves and convection ovens from you! Also learned that I love the look of the counter going straight back without a counter backsplash. Anyway, glad we went with the "might as well" remodel- if I didn't do it then, I don't think the time would ever be the "right" time to do it!

Our house had the original 1971 kitchen when we bought it last year. When we tried to open the drawers, the fronts came off. The cabinet doors had been glued on around the hinges, with nice drips of glue dried all down the sides of the doors. The beautiful dish towel hanger also had the lovely glue drips surrounding it. There were dead insects in the oven (which I never used; we bought all new appliances the night we moved in, because the refrigerator died while we were at closing).

When I tried to mop the lovely harvest gold floor, the pattern started coming up.

Definitely signs that a new kitchen was in order. Plus, when my mother was helping me unpack, she looked at me and said, "Your kitchen SUCKS."

{{gwi:1921497}}

{{gwi:1921498}}

{{gwi:1921499}}

Thanks for bumping this...good laughs for a Sunday afternoon!

tonilynne - you have a nice view out the window...LOVE the brick backsplash!!! (not)

bump

About the time you can't tell if the original color of your over and under double oven stove was avocado, or RUST!

About the time you stomp your foot to get the kids moving loading the dishwasher after supper, and your foot goes through the rotted floor.

Gimme time-- I'll come up with some more!! I don't know why this the first time I've seen this thread!! GREAT idea!

When I remodeled my living room and then painted the dining room, I realized the knotted pine wood cabinets with the exposed hinges didn't match any other decor.

Then the road to remodeling took place. I didn't take much time to plan it. As a result, I have had endless headaches.

Wow, this gives credence to the truism that there's always someone worse off than you. I hated our kitchen when we moved in, but because it was plain and small, not because it was falling apart (only 12 years old). Thanks for making me realize how good we had it.

Amazingly enough, however, I do have one thing that no one has mentioned:
...when you can drop a morsel of food on the floor and don't notice because it's hard to see in the thick, gray berber carpet.

I'm not sure I'll add anything new here, but here goes anyway:

* Sorry, honey, the ice is 5 years old. I can't get the ice container out of the freezer - the door can't open all the way. Wanna move the whole fridge?

* Shall we do a fancy fox-trot to get around the dishwasher when it's opened?

* Sorry, Mr. Fireman, I only turned my oven onto 250F!

* Fan? What ventilation fan? It stopped working years ago!

* OUCH! Was that my silverware drawer that just landed on my toe, again?! Prop it up with the sink cabinet door!

* Where's that smell coming from? Oh, the sink is leaking...again! Must be the wood under the sink rotting out!

* Honey, please take this can into the garage for me and open it! (The wall can opener is located in the garage for space reasons.)

* You'll have to store this out in the garage pantry. (No space for storage in the kitchen.)

* Where did that bruise come from? Oh, the corner of the peninsula.

* What do you mean, Tyler, "oh, you still have that old style of counter-top!" (One of DD's BF's worked at a counter-top builder/installation place.)

* I wonder what the original color of the grout on that tile counter-top WAS!

* Sorry, honey, that scratch in the vinyl flooring has been there for years. It's permanently engrained in the floor.

* If I look at these mirror tiles for ONE MORE MONTH, I think I'll scream!

* Don't anyone plug anything into that receptacle - it will shoot a spark at you later. Oh, not that one either. Or that one - or that one. Yeah, that one on the far wall is the only one working. What do you mean, the electrician disconnected the only working one while he was working on the family room addition! Guess we're going to eat out tonight or plug the crock pot in at the garage!

* Oh, my aching back! Use your knees to put stuff in the microwave down there! Whose dumb idea was that to put a microwave alcove a foot above the floor?

* Sure, I'd love a new range. But how are you going to get the old one out? Better send some strong guys - it's gotta go UP AND OVER that peninsula - the same dummy with the idea of putting a microwave near the floor thought it would be great to take up the entire kitchen with a peninsula!

* Somebody bring me a flashlight! That 40 watt fixture over the sink - whose dumb idea was that?

* I gotta change the bulbs in that fluorescent fixture AGAIN? Who stocks that kind of bulb these days? And who's carrying the plastic covers now for it?

DonnaR/CA

When your fridge is in the middle of the kitchen, blocking a door because the kitchen was built before they had fridges!

When your ventilation fan is - oops, it isn't. It's a hole going to the attic with decorative ironwork hiding the insulation up there.

When you have to remember to try to get those cabinet doors closed. They're vented to the outside, and it's cold out there.

When your temp kitchen is a cabinet next to your front door with a toaster stacked on a microwave oven. Your fridge is in the main entry hall and the extension cord gets knocked loose by people constantly tripping on it. The working sink is a utility sink on the front porch, plumbed with drinking-safe cold water. And it's NOT REALLY MUCH worse than before...

Oh I was just thinking these things -

when your old linoleum floor has worn thin in spots

when your old linoleum floor is simulated brown bricks circa 1975.

when your walls are made up of painted paneling

when having more than two appliances plugged in at any given time will blow fuses... on the other side of the house.

When you have a portable dishwasher which was supposed to just be temorary - 14 years ago..... 'nuff said

When your kitchen is CARPETED!!!!!

When your stove is almond, your dishwasher is black and your fridge is SS (it's new cause the old fridge you bought for $200 when you moved in to the fridgeless home died last summer in July resulting in the loss of ALL of its contents)

Oh, did I mention the trash compactor? (it's actually at the scrapyard at this point, but it was here when we bought the house)

When you don't mind if your puppy tears up the aforementioned carpet and then it sits like that for 10 years while you restore the rest of the house.

When the dishwasher is wired with the male end of an orange extension cord and that cord is plugged into an outlet that hangs out of the wall because the whole is about 3 inches too far over to line up with the dishwasher's opening in the cabinets.

When you have lived in the house for 10 years and still refuse to wash the windows in the kitchen (which are all different styles and sizes) because they are just going to get taken out anyway...when we renovate the kitchen. (10 years goes by FAST!!!)

When you have to get down on your knees to reach the items you think you might own that are stored in the blind corner cabs.

When your only kitchen vent fan had a pull string. ("Had" because you took it out and now it's just a round hole in the wall where you can hear the "flapper" flap when the Wyoming winds blow down the exhaust pipe.)

When the kitchen is 20 degrees cooler than the rest of the house in winter and the bottle of Dawn sitting on the sink takes on a funny opaque kind of congealed look during cold spells.

When you could cold store items in your base cabs in the winter.

When the blades in your disposal refuse to turn.

When you decide to replumb the supply lines to the sink cause they are close to another plumbing project and it'll just be easy and you find that when you hold the removed supply lines up to your eye you can no longer see ANY light coming down the pipe...they are solid with deposits and rust. SOLID!

When you cannot run the micro, espresso machine and toaster all at the same time.

When the aforementioned windows no longer open but seem to accumulate these little, mysterious piles of dirt in the corner where the wind whistles in.

When there are only two working burners on your almond stove.

When the dishwasher periodically spurts water out on the floor along both sides.

When the kitchen has this really cute pastel pattern, vynil wallpaper like little bathroom seashells.

I think it's time.

Rene

bump

When everyone who saw it just stared and then looked at us like "you moved from that cute house--why?"
Harvest gold, 24" double oven (one oven worked, temp not correct) and cooktop (3 of the 4 rings working) and matching laminate countertops, fridge very old and moldy! Dark blue wallpaper. One small window and ancient fluorescent light fixtures.
View from DR:

View from other end (control center for clean/fix up of rest of house, prior to moving in):

After wallpaper removal (yes, that is an ironing board wall cabinet-still use it! Note green paint--found traces of it on practically EVERY painted surface in the house):

One year later, moved kitchen to DR and began conversion of old kitchen to laundry room:

When the 1970s range with eye level second oven sticks out a foot into the kitchen because the electrician who took it out to work behind it (cutting the end off a countertop to do so) can't force it back in again, and neither can I and my 280lb friend combined.

When someone had to saw off lower shelf of the cabinet over the range to get it in there in the first place, and it's now a gaping hole

When said range is painted with peeling cream latex paint over harvest gold original color

When removing the range reveals that the opening for the vent hood has been covered over and there's a handwritten note on the wall saying the electrical feel has been removed as well

When because of the lack of a vent fan, the soffit has decorative brown spots all round the edge where the nails holding the corner bead have rusted through the paint from the condensation

When the vinyl floor has multiple dings and tears, as well as paint spots from the bathroom paint job (puke pink) and the kitchen paint job (sky blue)

When rats come though into the kitchen from the crawl space via the gap next to the hot air duct, and run back and forth stealing the dry cat food (ignored by both cats and visitng dog)

When the silverware drawer twists sideways and jams every time someone other than me tries to push it in (I've developed a knack, I guess)

When the rim of the sink is 1/4" above the countertop it's set into, and the gap is full of ick.

When the replaced-just-before-I bought-the-place countertop is mottled, textured laminate which is impossible to clean (if you can even tell it's dirty!)

When there's nothing but a gaping hole where the dishwasher ought to be

When you have to have multiple clip-on lights attached to the upper cabinets to see anything at all, because the main light fitting is a single bulb in the middle of the ceiling

When you remove all the upper cabinet doors in exasperation because the handles are in the CENTER of each door and they are awkward to reach and you can't tell which way the door will open from where the handle is

When you clean all the cabinets twice and they still feel dirty

When the cabinet handles look like something out of a bad bodice-ripper novel

When the light switch for the over-sink light used to be directly over the range, but has been moved along the wall to beside the sink using surface-mounted fittings.

When the microwave blows the breaker if the fridge comes on at the same time (and the outlet it's plugged into is INSIDE the upper cabinet above it

When the whole kitchen, apart from the range, runs off one electrical circuit which also serves other rooms as well

When the water coming out of the cold tap is a brown trickle so you use hot water for everything.

When the outlets on the backsplash are installed not quite horizontally, and are painted dark teal, from the decorative generation before the sky blue paint on the cabinets and soffit.

When all the windows are single glazed aluminum sliders that need plastic film over them every winter.

When the floor is freezing cold because rats have ripped down a lot of the under-floor insulation in the crawlspace below.

On the bright side, the fridge is almost new, there's a 6 ft stretch of uninterrupted counter space, and lots of cabinet space.

I've lived with it for 3 years only because I'm still working on the bathroom, which was even worse!

Here is a link that might be useful: The house when I bought it, inclding the kitchen and even worse bathroom

This has been a fun thread...there's still plenty of room for more stories!

When I realized that EVERY SINGLE APPLIANCE WAS BROKEN to some extent:
-- the DW had a door leak (not cost effective to repair), so for over a year I just stuffed a towel at its toe, let mold accumulate in the adjacent cabinets, until the leak grew onto my pride&joy hardwood floors;
-- microwave died, no one knew why, not cost effective to repair, bought tacky countertop model for a few years;
-- leak at ugly faucet
-- garbage disposal just sheared off! Rotted at the top of the cylinder and fell off completely!
-- other side of sink was unuseable due to bad pipe layout (not enough slope, things clogged)
-- fridge (purchased 1985) was given last rites in 1998; door shelves all broke off and can't get replacement parts, company out of business, icemaker line dripped onto the floor for two years straight;
-- oven temperature was a wild guess;
-- and, most alarming of all, only two burners working on stovetop, ignition took three minutes to work during which a gas smell would grow, and then the accumulated gas would explode into a fireball (I am NOT making this up)

When the tarantula the size of a dinner plate took up residence under the fridge. (I am not making that up either, although my kid says it was closer to a salad plate.)

When a rat died under the sink base.

Oh, and the tiles were falling off the backsplash, the cabinets were last popular when the Santa Fe look was big in parts of the country other than New Mexico, the fluorescent lights were hideous, and the sheet vinyl floor was ugly.

But other than those details, it was great.