Does she live on Lombard Street by any chance? There was (and still is, to some degree) a tendency to convert Philadelphia basement spaces to living spaces because there are a lot of "English Basements" meaning half above ground with decent sized windows. I lived in a unit a few blocks away that had a basement bedroom and although it had decent windows, the bedroom still got limited light. I now live in a conventional unit but it still has two interior hallways and bath, and the kitchen is mostly interior space. I also stopped going to the Philadelphia Home Show because it became very suburban oriented,--- gigantic furniture, and patio materials, vinyl siding and windows, and enormous hot tubs have little to do with an urban core of 19thc. brick houses with yards that approximate 12'-15'x6' if that. The key is going to be choosing colors that look good under artificial light, and having a lot of artificial light sources. Many yellows, which seem like they would brighten up a room, look pretty dingy when lit artificially, especially by ceiling fixtures. Do not depend on a central ceiling fixture for most of the light. Actually my apartment only had one ceiling fixture in an interior hallway, and the room was also a soft tan/yellow that looked great in the upstairs that got a lot of natural light...it was horrible. It was set up as my office area and I never used it because of the central fixture and the way the color felt.The other rooms required multiple lamps due to the complete lack of "built in" lighting, and the result was much more pleasant than the overhead glare I see looking in so many people's windows (You know what I mean, not being a peeping Tom :) So, have multiple light sources, table lamps, sconces, and ceiling lights combined. Encourage her to use real color. Keeping everything white or near white won't help all that much and will feel cold. In my newer place, I have a dark interior stairwell and I just went with it and painted it black. The woodwork is all white, and there is artwork, --but one thing its not is dingy or depressing. I wouldnt recommmend this for living space but as transition space it works quite well. I think if she embraces the lack of natural light and supplements it with artificial, and creates things to look at inside the apartment to compensate for the lack of view she could be very happy with the result.

Just bumping this up in hopes of getting some help. This is a very functional kitchen while cooking. You retrieve from the refrigerator, wash in the sink, prep between sink and stove and serve. Kitchen prep space currently is 27" inches sink to stove. We've managed in the past, but for the remodel, I've enlarged prep space between sink and range to 36" by removing wall side fillers and adjusting the range location to the right. Using a 30" kitchen sink base instead of a 33" sink base would yield another 3" for the major kitchen prep zone (total of 39"). I think a lot of about a separate clean up zone in the pantry. I considered a second DW here, but given the size of the kitchen/pantry in general I couldn't justify it, due in part to concern about what happens when a DW isn't regularly used. Should I consider moving the main DW to the pantry in your opinion? The pantry sink is plumbed for an ice maker which is old and being removed. A garbage disposal would be needed, but doesn't that also mean separate sink venting? Probably the two sinks vent together already? The pantry sink cabinet could easily be changed to 24" w, 8 to 10" deep for cleanup, allowing the balance of the base pantry cabs to be 24" and 24" (I thought of an under counter 24" refrigerator to minimize need for drinks from fridge). I have gone back and forth on this clean up function point. One disadvantage to moving the current DW location is dishes are closer to the cook in the kitchen but not by much. On an aside, in twenty years of raising kids, we never had any problem with the DW next to the kitchen door as we always kept it (the DW door) closed when not being emptied or filled. All advice is welcomed. Thanks. This post was edited by SparklingWater on Mon, Feb 25, 13 at 19:43

So. The guys finished up their part yesterday and now it's up to me to do the rest. Their work looks pretty good if you don't look real hard at all the details (which I am going to stop doing in a day or two, I hope, since done is done). These are Applad cabinets from IKEA (semi-gloss white--love them!) and their solid beech butcherblock Numerar counters. The sink is a big honking 16-guage near-zero radius corner Vigo from the O site, faucet from IKEA. The shelf was ripped from one 8' Numerar counter and installed on 10" corner brackets from the hardware store which were screwed into studs every 2 feet. I'd originally gotten some of those posts where you have to drill holes into the shelf edge and slip it onto the posts but they weren't sturdy enough for an 11" deep 1.5" thick solid hardwood shelf that will have cast iron pots on it---so I switched to this method (thanks to my daughter for finding it online!). It is STRONG. The parts that show on the wall under the shelf will be patched and tiled over. The undersides of the shelf were routed out so that the bracket is recessed--will see about patching that over with thin strips cut from leftover butcherblock using a circular saw. They also routed out a channel for the LED tape lights (again, thanks to Yllimuh!) so you can't see the tape unless you crane your neck under there which I do not intend to do ever. LOVE the LEDs. The outlets with the transformers are inside cabinets at the ends and they fished the wire through the wall on the side with no uppers. Still waiting for the appliance people to come back and install the DW and slide-in range, which I hope will happen in the next few days. I paid them for installation months ago but it had to wait until now. I am going to get the IKEA "Bursta" table in the 32" square size (with two pullout leaves which i think make it about 60" long?) and keep it pushed up against the wall most of the time with 2-3 chairs around it. It can be moved into the living room if I ever want to have 4+ people at a sit-down meal. Or just pulled out into the kitchen a bit. It'd be cramped in there but it would only be for rare occasions so it's fine with me. I think I'm going to repaint the walls. They are a very pale gray but I think they'll look better the same color as the ceiling and soffits. There are too many planes in there to have different colors going on, even subtle ones. Oh, also, I skim coated the sand textured walls (except for the vertical parts of the soffits) by rolling on thinned joint compound with a paint roller (!) and squeegeeing it smooth with a Magic Trowel (!!!!). It worked amazingly well and was much easier than the conventional skim coating method! It took only 2 coats. I also bought a drywall sander Shop-vac attachment for $25 on Amazon--WAY worth it to not have to drape the doorways and clean up dust off everything for weeks afterward. It vacuumed literally all the dust as I sanded. I didn't even wear a mask. Amazing. Overhead light only LED lighting only from the other end of the room looking at the opposite side - 24"W fridge goes in the first tall empty space and the end unit is a 24" wide pullout pantry

".... we have removed the drywall to see our limitations..." Good. Good. Hidden in your simulation drawings are a pony wall under the sink counter and a floor to ceiling drain pipe in a pillar/column/cabinetry tower. Question about drain pipe: plastic or metal? Plastic ("PVC") or metal ("cast")? Why: noise when drainage water from above drops down the pipe. You need to know how much to wrap it, how much to insulate it. This means you have less storage inside the tower, or more, depending on whether it's PVC or cast. Pony Wall: not a big limitation. I'm certain you can work it into your storage that will be accessed from the dining room side. Sink Drain pipe is where it is. Answer: can have a double sink or two separate sinks emptying into that one drain pipe. Either one P trap, or 2 Ptraps one of which is AAV-vented. Btw, calling something stacked is ultimately going to lead down that same road again, towards humor that is only temporarily funny but not good for the long term. Please just call it an apartment condo just like the million other apartment style condos in urban highrise buildings -- even though yours isn't in a skyscraper. july, I skimmed through your previous thread and saw that the humor had been cleaned up. Good. I liked the fun but now it's over. Working inside a space that has a couple of strongly-worded physical limitations, like a condo with pipes that "have to stay", I find you have to keep an open mind. As you get underway,, you may find that some things CAN be reduced in size to be smaller than you thought. The pony wall might get shrunk and shrunk and shrunk and shrunk. If you post about it in the Remodeling Forum, with an excruciating amount of detail, you may find people give you a number of good ideas about how to reduce it or integrate it into your storage. Kitchen forum people are, for the most part, not experienced renovator builder types, and of those who ARE, they are mostly not interested in asking about studs (spacing and sizing), the physical reasons for a structure, and the mechanical aspects of structures. Hint hint. You've been told. When you are building your sink counter run, you might discover that the pony wall can be made to disappear for all intents and purposes, as long as... (see new thread about the pony wall). In this forum the pony wall is not a productive subject. In this forum you get people who accept things as given. I'm certain you can work the pony wall into your storage that will be accessed from the dining room side, or find an even better alternative. What you are doing with the pony wall and with the drainwrapping cabinetry is like urban in-fill construction, where your plans on paper represent most of what ultimately gets built, but not all. The plans are a subjective guide not a strict order. In an infill project, when you come across an opportunity to grab a few more inches you grab those inches. You are expanding your kitchen from the inside while apparently maintaining the same footprint. Also good to know, as knowledge that allows you to understand your options: it is permissible to rebuild drain pipes so that they zigzag downwards. Drains are always built with zigzag offset bends in order to allow the pipe to expand and contract normally and remain roughly the same size from floor to floor, so it is acceptable to add an offset in the drain. This is merely good to know, and not a recommendation to consider this as an option unless there is a big reason for it. In 2011, the pony wall may be a strongly worded physical limitation because the humans who dominated the committee at that point in time used their existing knowledge to the best of their abilities at that point in time. But, you may find that this or any other socalled requirement issued by the committee disappears as you progress through the renovation and AS you persist in your pursuit, showing things and explaining things to people who don't know everything that you now know as you renovate. Committees have been known to be wrong, to drop previous requirements, etc. I have seen many cases of committees that write and say one thing and then hire workers to do the opposite thing, even while the committee maintains its written position. The one or two committee members who know what's really happening don't mind the doublespeak, and the other committee members are comforted by the nice wording in the resolution that they voted for, and truly believe that the wording described what really got built no matter how much time you spend talking to them. About the sliver piece of countertop that crosses the tower: this kind of detail is best handled by an architect, or a high level designer, or a good taste handyman, WHEN you get closer to there and when you truly have built that tower thingie that way. Right now it's idle thinking, too far in advance. You don't know yet whether your tower will be that size. Hth,