If the backsplash tiles are 6" the depth of that kitchen is slightly over seven feet.

I love it! Not the kitchen, but that you posted this. I always look on realtor.com and NYTimes Real Estate section and marvel at the expense of the houses and the simplicity / low to mid endness of the kitchens.

Where we live, a 800K home could easily have laminate!

And yeah, size. Whoa. This is a small one! Interesting that cookbook sales are on the rise, cooking shows are rampant and kitchens in new houses are meh.

They would have been better off going with cabs to the ceiling and putting a cab over the fridge. Wonder if they can OPEN the dw???

I've toured enough new houses, enough new $500K - $1 million houses, to know that most of the time kitchens in these houses aren't about functionality, they are about looks. They have several different "Parade of Homes" type of events in the Houston area which show off these high end houses and we go to a lot of them.

It amazes me how many of these really gorgeous kitchens are simply not laid out for best functionality. Wasted space, undefined work areas, and especially in those larger kitchens, things way too far apart that should be close together are just a few of the design mistakes I see.

But honestly, before I did my remodel, I never looked that critically at the kitchen. Beautiful cabinets and granite would have been enough to blind me to any practical (or nonpractical) aspects of a kitchen. And I think that's how most people are. Hypercritical people like us who scrutinize kitchens are, I would venture to say, relatively rare.

Interesting. I wonder who among here has gone shopping for a new home after redoing their kitchens? In general, were you happy with the kitchens that you saw? Did you have a harder time finding a place you like because the kitchen wasn't up to your standards?

Actually the more I look at this it looks like a contractor who buys houses, rehabs them in a particular way and sells them...clients we designed a rehab for used them and we had to check at least once a day to make sure they were actually ---reading and following the plans.

We had to fight tooth and nail to get the owner's unit part of the house completed in any relation to the actual plans. For the rental unit we did the general layout for the kitchen and let them just do it, and it looks just like this, with a 38 inch opening for 30" range, for example. This whole house has their "look".

These contractors are the Second I have worked with who told the clients; "If I had known the designer(s) were going to be there all the time making sure we followed the plans exactly, we would have scheduled more time and charged you a lot more money" I must be a real PITA. 8-[

I think contractors just want to do things the way they are used to -- like the way DH or my boys want to take something out of the box and start using it without looking at instructions. I not only had the layout and elevations taped to the bare walls, but also all the installation specs taped at the location for each appliance or other item. I still had to be checking them. The guy who placed the gas line for my cooktop cut a notch out of the back of my drawer. When the connection got moved to the right place, it didn't need the notch out of the drawer -- buy it's still there to remind me of what a numbskull he was.

I responded to the last post an then remembered the original subject (oops)...

DH and I have pretty much quit going to home shows because we have busy weekends with the kids and got tired of paying to go look at homes that mostly looked the same and didn't inspire us. However, I have gone online and looked at homes on the market from time to time. Generally I can tell DH that he'll be glad to know that I didn't find a house I would consider -- either at all or under $1.5 million or more. It would be very hard to move after creating a kitchen to work around me instead of the other way around.

Joep---Me! Me! Me!

We redid our kitchen in our *forever* house in 2007...then decided we had to move from the area (extremely rural) in 2008.

Looking at houses in a more expensive market was difficult enough, what to speak of the thought of getting a new builders grade kitchen. Blurgh.

The house we settled on was the perfect match for us....because the kitchen was god-awful. We kind of new that whatever house we got, we would need to redo the kitchen because, well, I actually cook.

But who in good conscience can rip out a new kitchen to remodel? Well, I could, but I didn't want to....too difficult to justify. So our house was built in 1962 and not updated one iota.

Perfect!

When I renovated my kitchen in 2008, this forum was invaluable for ideas, organization and education. I now find myself casually evaluating other kitchens for functuality. Most could use a few tweaks. As in my old kitchen, you get used to working in a space and don't give it much thought--till it's fixed with an efficient layout.

Maroonish cherry? Check.
Dark granite? Check.
Stainless appliances? Check.
De rigeur island? Check.

Here in the city of endless rowhouses, we call this look -- which might work fine in larger, brighter kitchens -- The Funeral Home Special. It is the mark of a speculator who buys, tarts up, and flips, usually within 45 days. The tragedy is that many of the houses subjected to this cookie-cutter indignity have inherent charm and could have produced very nice kitchens with a bit of thought and not a cent more investment.

There ought to be a law.

in my area 390K isn't a very large house. that kitchen is nicer than most under 500K. 75% of the kitchens on houses are either the early 90s oak with laiminate or the 80s white slab formica cabinets.

I don't particularly like the cherry finish cabinets and dark granite. the other popular combo is the off white with brown glaze and tan granite, both fresh off the boat from China from a no-name cabinet brand. I think the layout sucks and the finishes aren't very imaginative.

No offense to anyone here, but this is how the other half lives and what they're happy with, so...... thats what they'll get.

It reminds me of watching House Hunters. The potential buyers all say the same thing: "The kitchen has exactly what I want . . . . stainless and granite." At the same time, I'm thinking (and usually saying aloud) -- BUT IT'S NOT FUNCTIONAL! Last week they had one with a corner sink and a 6 -12 inch space between it and the range. And then, another 6 inches between the range and the frig. And that was the house they chose.

My husband now comments on the House Hunter kitchens, too!

That's the WHOLE kitchen?

This is a flip for sure, and $390K gets a "basic" house in most parts of the city. Or even a shell condition/lot in others. This is an "entry level" house around here:(

If this is the contractor I am familiar with it is all from China. Some cabinet company I have never heard of.

These finishes are generally pretty popular around here if you look at a lot of houses,(not my particular taste, but no matter) but it is the layout that is really problematic. The original kitchen probably took up the entire width of this part of the house, (and either had a small kitchen table in the middle, or they ate in the dining room) Since these have all been converted to "open plan" --the first floor is one open space--there are no walls to place furniture against and the dining room disappears, functionally although the space is still there.

Wow, granite in a starter home? Not gonna happen in my market. Try cheapo builder grade everything. There's no money in flipping starter type homes here either. Such redevelopment is done to attract buyers with more money, usually into older, desirable neighbourhoods.

I don't see what's so bad about the layout. I think it is a concept that is very overrated UNLESS you happen to be TKO. How many of the target market will fit that description? How many of the target market can/will actually cook?

Yep granite goes in entry level here. For $400k they want something. I am sure they buy it in bulk and if you look its a small L, the smallish island and a small piece on the cabinet between range and fridge...could be made of a double sink cutout. Also full tile and/or granite baths...its a regional thing.

I would imagine the types of buyers in these homes would have to cook at home sometimes, they are probably house poor. This neighborhood was still "ghetto" a couple years ago, downright dangerous a decade ago--its where people who want to live in the city, in a house, have to buy---they are priced out of established markets.

To answer the question about kitchens turning me off? Well, I would rather buy a house with an old dysfunctional kitchen than a new kitchen, and redo it myself. I see a lot of kitchens that are perfectly ok ergonomically, given the limitations of their size (this one is *too *tight really) --but if they are ok function wise, a lot of the time I hate the finishes, and I don't want to pay for and subsequently discard a new kitchen. There is nothing about the pictured kitchen that would make me happy. Its a popular look around here, but its not what I would go for.

You know we have an old 1950s kitchen, u-shaped, 2-3 decent steps from one side to the other, sink at the bottom of the u. I love it. Everything is accessible. Now, I would love to have some cabinets with slide-outs, etc., but this basic layout works. It's also shorter than a modern kitchen... such that we'd have to buy a $$$ European dishwasher. But I'm not tall, and this works for me.

"The Funeral Home Special" is a perfect description!

Flipped rowhouses around me look very much like the photo but with a slightly smaller price tag. One that comes to mind was around the corner where everything was 'newly renovated & luxurious'. The cabinets were poorly stained, dark mahogany with the doors & drawers falling apart & flimsy; cheapo stainless appliances; an island with space left for a range that was mysteriously missing along with any gas or electric hookup; no venting; & granite with horrible seams. And make-it-fit was the only criteria for arrangement. I believe new owners re-did it.

In my area, having the stove next to the fridge is against code. That kitchen really looks much too tight.

I think there is a 6-9" sliver of cabinet between fridge and range, but I don't think adjacencies like this are against code here because of the size of some kitchens. In some houses one of the kitchen dimensions is 5 feet, the same as a bathroom, which may occupy the same spot one floor up.

This is the reason I came to this site in the first place.

We bought our house in 2006 - it was a new house, not considered a spec build, but the people who built it never lived in it and probably never had any intention to. The kitchen looks fine when you walk in and just view it, but we literally have our house on the market now in major part because I can't stand working in the kitchen. Of course, having your house on the market now isn't very easy, so we're rethinking our strategy and considering a budgeted remodel to the kitchen that will allow me to not curse every time I use it and we'll stick it out for another 5 years or so until the market turns around. I'm just hoping I can do what I need to do to make the kitchen functional for less than $15k because I don't think we'd recoup our money if we spend more - mainly because, as you are all saying, making something FUNCTIONAL doesn't increase the value as much as making the kitchen shiny and pretty and our kitchen already is fine for that.

It's frustrating.