Last time I invited you to Vancouver, you quite liked it. Today, you’re going to cry. Not particularly festive – but we’ll regroup for hot chocolate later.
Vancouver apartment kitchens generally kind of suck. In terms of the (pause to count)…. TEN rental apartments that Paolo & I have suffered between us, each & every kitchen sucked.
I asked for more counter space for Christmas 5 years running.
Sure, people renovate to personal tastes in homes they own and love – in fact, good friends have done just that. But as for the typical Vancouver rental apartment kitchen, and those that rotate through MLS? Shitty shitty bang bang.
This is good for us – easy to make something better stand out, but also sad for mankind – the bar is set low. Slumdog standards. I’ve been undertaking obsessive research about what makes a Vancouver apartment kitchen worth having. What would stand out? Where do we need to spend money? What’s buyer taste in our price bracket?
Vancouver apartment kitchens: $300,000 – $400,000
(Photos ordered from lowest to highest price – All photo sources: MLS.ca)
Oh, you wanted pretty pictures? Wrong blog, baby. Let’s turn to scientific proof. All kitchens included here are 1-bed/1-bath Vancouver starter apartments. I didn’t look at size, particular area, building age or anything else (though a lot of these places are between just 550-600 square feet). Didn’t discriminate between new and old. I just wanted a quick, dirty sample of what your money gets. Is 10 apartments a big enough sample to conclude not a whole freaking lot?
I stalk MLS and I’d remember something half decent. A year or more later, I’m still waiting to be impressed.
Unless you’re throwing all your money at a brand-new, bells-and-whistles kitchen in a tiny (TINY) apartment (as in the next example) – the kitchens seem to universally suck.
Vancouver might be the best place to live - as long as you don’t cook? These two kitchens come in apartments with the same price tag – $350,000.
Um, yea, hi, that fridge costs $800. But I’m not mad that you’re cheap. In fact, I really want to give you the full $350k and probably play bidding-war for awhile because this is all just such great value. How did you know I don’t respect myself or my money?
I realize that Apartment Therapy’s showcase gems are the exception, but they’ve raised my expectations. If I’m throwing over $300-$400k at a property that I don’t want to renovate, I want to be squealing about the kitchen like a mud-crazed pig. Does the above photo suggest improvement the closer we get to $400?
Can we please have just a little shininess? Anice fridge or stove or mention of Kohler/Corian, a bit of name-drop?
- As for counter space? Fail.
- As for ‘where do I fit my friends?’ (And still have room to breathe?) Fail.
- And where do Nigella and all her cookbook friends live? Fail.
Would any of the above places make you squeal? How about this guy, sitting squarely at $400k.
Our new kitchen has a lot to live up to: it needs to stand out, be useful, stay within a tight budget and more. It needs to knock the bloody socks off this sorry heap of competitors. I’m thinking start with white paint and some decent work space….
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Well, none of the kitchens are awful–they’re all totally there, clean, and remodeled in the past 10-20 years which is tons better than I’ve seen in my previous house hunts–but I agree they’re a little soulless. Can’t wait to see what you come up with!
Ah yes – maybe ‘souless’ sums the entire problem. I guess if I were buying a new (or newly finished) place I’d just want more to love than a basic checking-of-boxes.
Can I just say I’m glad I live in Texas? I think you can crush those other kitchens.
Yes, totally, can I join you? Well since I’ve run out of ‘regular motivation’, competition seems the next logical thing!
So, what’s the plan after you flip this apartment? Are you going to dive into another ugly baby and flip it, so you can eventually afford a house with a strip of land?
Because just think, if you are, there are a whole lot more walls to hit still! Should get easier as you go though.
At least with your kitchen layout, you have the opportunity to make it something great. My apartment in Edmonton was a 10 foot galley about 3 feet wide! You can do it! Get some fancy drawer pullout things from IKEA. Can’t go wrong with organization, storage and shinies!!
That’s pretty much the plan, yea. House could be a long way off for as long as we refuse suburbia.
Definite YES to shinies and storage!
Okay, compared to our kitchen in the house-we-need-to-sell in Virginia, every one of those do, indeed, suck. I have been quite spoiled for the last 3 1/2 years by a LARGE kitchen with counter space around (seriously) 3 walls and a center island. But compared to the house-we-need-to-remodel in Maryland, I’d sell a kidney for almost any of them. I now have (and you know I measured) 18 inches of usable counter space. And my cupboard space is just what you would expect in such a bountiful space. Oh, and it was meant to be an eat-in kitchen. In what universe? The end of the kitchen that was supposed to hold a dinner table is now home to a 4-foot long stainless steel prep table bought at a restaurant supply house, and a 5-foot tall freestanding cabinet. One day we’ll get tired of commuting to VA every weekend and sell the house, and all that equity will buy me a new kitchen. But not yet.
I might need to check a map – but can’t you just do all your cooking on the weekends & then eat leftovers during the week? How did you end up with two such disparate kitchens?
I do a bit of that – made a big pot of soup on Friday that fed us for a couple of nights. But I genuinely enjoy cooking and we both appreciate variety, so with the additions we’ve made to the kitchen I make out alright. Actually, I do so well, it’s made me think twice about how much of the “stuff” in my VA kitchen is really necessary! I just can’t imagine how the previous residents have made this ridiculous excuse for a kitchen work for all these years. My mother is one of the least imaginative or adventurous cooks I’ve ever known, but even she needs more work space than this place afforded.
The Hubs got a promotion which made it necessary to move to the DC area. The RE market being what it is right now, if we sell the VA house, we’d be lucky to lose only $60K or so. So we chose to buy a foreclosure property for a song. It has obvious potential to be a really lovely and comfortable home, but right now it is a disaster. Even before it was foreclosed it was a rental property, and the landlord was apparently not the sort to maintain her property in good condition to maximize return on investment. It was built in 1964, and nearly everything in the house is original, so it’s going to be quite a project. But we’re patient people; I can see this being a real showplace in 4 or 5 years. No hurry. Except for windows… this place is incredibly drafty. As soon as I can find a job, we’re replacing every window in the place!!
Definitely agree with you about the “stuff”! Used to think I needed every last Williams-Sonoma offering…. could now probably cook and eat happily from just a camp stove and spork. Will we ever get to see photos of your so-called monstrosity?? You must be saving up some sweeeeeeeeet before/afters.
Holy crap! I know you warned us, but still can’t believe that’s all you get for that kind of dough (and I’m not just talking about the kitchen!). And here I was b*tching about 2000SqFt, $300K houses in my area with no central AC.
On the other hand, anyone who’s ever worked in a restaurant knows that you don’t need an acre of counter space or a aircraft carrier-sized island to have a functional kitchen. It just has to look big to sell. So another vote for shiny and storage!
2,000 square feet? I don’t recognize square footage with commas in it, sorry – that’s palatial.
I think I’ve mentioned this before in kitchen related posts but our kitchen definitely hindered the sale of our home. The rest of the home, great! The 110 sf in our kitchen? Not so great. All of the wanna-be gourmet chefs thumbed their nose at our quaint little kitchen. I totally think you’re on the right track with your “beat the competition” mentality. Too bad you can’t leave that bit until last to see what listings you might be competing with directly. Though, you seem to have such a great handle on the Vancouver real estate market that I think you know *exactly* what you’re doing.
Hey no complaining about kitchens with triple-digit square footage! Since I decided the kitchen meant war, I’ve been having much more fun with it. Smack talk will last as long as the renovation goes to plan! “Take your Corian counters & shove them.”
I don’t think I have a clue what I’m doing, but thank you! Perhaps other apartment owners just have lives and interests beyond their ugly 4 walls. Me? Not so much. Haha!
It may have been a triple digit sf kitchen but it was so poorly used! Only one wall out of 4 had a counter on it. I think we had 3 feet of legit usable counter space and then maybe another foot on the other wise of the sink. But yeah… after moving into a one bedroom apartment where 110 is 1/8 of my total sf I won’t complain anymore! Besides, now its someone ELSE’s 110 sf poorly arranged kitchen.
Deep breaths and Smitten Kitchen.
It’s not just tiny apartments in Vancouver. Lots of $1,000,000+ homes in Ottawa have the ugliest kitchens you could imagine. Seriously.
Sarah Richardson does amazing things with Ikea cabinets – check out her web sites for some inspiration.
I’m sure you’ll be able to do something great with your kitchen, and you CAN do it on a budget. Don’t throw in the towel yet!
In the vein of ‘money doesn’t buy taste?’ Heh – I’m sure you’ve seen house pics of Vancouver’s, um, ‘more recently rich’? Yikes.
Will definitely check out Sarah-does-Ikea, thanks! No towels being thrown – but only feeding nickels to Ikea at the minute… dimes saved for later.
Oh I love Vancouver. My BF stayed there for a few years after highschool and we would go and visit him. He stayed with an older woman in a ginourmous house that wasn’t too far from downtown. He rented a room…a SINGLE ROOM from her. There was only ONE WASHROOM between him and her and another tennant…and the rent was like 1000 bucks a month!!!
It was a beautiful place though.
That’s the devil of it all. We know we’re being royally screwed and then there’s one sunny day out of 30 & we roll over & say, “Ok Vancouver, you win. Actually, why not raise rents & housing prices some more? You’re so beautiful you can treat as however you want.”
Vancouver economics: $1,000 for 1 bathroom (shared or otherwise), $2,000 for 2, $3,000 for 3….