When we moved into our apartment, we fell in love with the fantastic gas range and the super-wide oven below it in our new kitchen. We were also really pleased about the great side-by-side fridge which would make leaving our old one behind easier. If we’d had only a typical tiny German fridge /freezer combo, we definitely would have been looking for a place to bring our old one.

As much as we liked the kitchen and especially its appliances, the amount of storage space it offered was not so great. To have such nice, professional appliances, I’m really not sure where the people who build this kitchen stored any pots, pans, or small appliances for that matter. Perhaps they did something similar to us — but just took the furniture with them. These first shots are just a few photos of what the place looked like when we moved in, which you might remember.

And below is what it looks like today. Notice the 4 foot deep stack of flat boxes on the left which are boxes we’ve unpacked…there is another similar stack in the entry way. Can’t wait for those to be picked up by the movers!

As you can see, we’ve come a long way. During out first days of unpacking in here, there were a few hours of time when I think my MIL was convinced I was going to have a nervous breakdown. It was a combination of just not having a clue where to put the things we’d be using all the time — and trying to get rid of even more things that we would probably use but just didn’t have space for. It wasn’t enough that I’d already purged about 5 boxes of stuff from the kitchen; but I actually ended up getting rid of another 2 boxes worth of stuff here — and a ton of plastic containers as well.

We bought a bunch of hooks from IKEA to hang a lot of our cooking utensils and other things we wanted to keep handy on the cool racks along the kitchen walls. As you’ll notice, there are no upper cabinets, which really limits what you can have in the kitchen.

We also found ourselves an island at IKEA called STENSTORP, which is just the right width to line up with the column jutting out into the kitchen. Since the colors of it are neutral, we didn’t have too much hassle to fit it in, but we’re thinking about maybe putting a thin backing on it and painting it with chalkboard paint, which could be really fun for dinner parties when you throw a menu up there.

The island turned out to be perfect for our pots and pans. Well it’s actually better for the pots and baking stuff than for the pans. Having them all stacked up is space saving, but you have to shuffle them around when you actually want to use on, and the lower ones are pretty heavy, so it’s just not very practical.

In our drawers in the kitchen, we’ve got things mostly squared away. I managed to fit our most crucial silverware and utensils in this drawer and a few other things are scattered around in other drawers and pieces of furniture. I’m starting to think that I should mark things in the kitchen that I’m not sure we use enough with circle stickers. I’ll write down the day I did this, and before I use it the first time, I will take the sticker off. Anything which still has a sticker after 3 months, hits the trash or Freecycle.

On the other end of the dining room sits our main glassware shelf. This old sideboard was in our barn at the farm and I had to insist that we bring it with us. I’m SO glad we did because it not only holds all our glasses, but the bottom has also become our pantry. It’s super practical — but now we just have to eat all the excess from the huge pantry we used to have at the farm. It is kinda nice not to have to go shopping for staple foods, though.

And the final thing we bought at IKEA for this room was this STORNÄS sideboard which not only holds extra bakeware, casserole dishes and serving stuff, but also our liquor cabinet. BTW, anyone who wants to come over and make cocktails for us is welcome to do so! We don’t drink cocktails at home nearly often enough…

And so far, this is the final piece of wonderfulness in our kitchen / dining space. It’s a piece of art from a Berlin artist, Uwe Tabatt, that we completely fell in love with called Glanz & Gloria. It has many of the Berlin landmarks on it and is actually painted on reclaimed wood. It’s actually almost as if the artist sketched it with brushes. We just love it!

One other thing we are still thinking about is what to put under the fish on the other side of the room. We’re thinking that some sort of wine rack would be practical since we still have a bunch of it to drink at the farm. If we put it in the basement, it will probably sit there forever, much like it’s done at the farm for the last few years. So we’ll see what we come up with on that.  😉