All Forum Posts by: Ashly B.

 I don't remember the brand or what we paid, but its similar to this: http://www.homedepot.com/p/KitchenAid-12-in-Counte...

The "stove" is something along these lines http://www.homedepot.com/p/Magic-Chef-Double-Burner-Portable-Cooktop-Black-MCSDB15B/204984548 

So ours is actually located under our front stoop and the layout was pretty confined by the space we were working with. The room used to just be a leaky storage space with crumbling wall cabinets and peeling cement ceilings. We sealed it, dry walled, put down some laminate tiles and repurposed cabinets I had in my craft room upstairs that had been just storing junk. The fridge was left by a previous tenant so really all we did was buy the corner cabinet (Restore), the counters and purchase the hot plate and counter oven (not shown here). 

Not sure this helps a ton since presumably you have a much different space to work with but that's what worked for us and it didn't cut into the other living space down there. 

 Exactly - no sink. We have a full sized fridge, an induction oven that fits a 9x13 pan, a 2 burner hot plate and a microwave. You can't cook a thanksgiving turkey but they can do quite a bit. This is our 4th set of renters and no one has had any issues with it. They do have a sink in the bathroom obviously so they have water but its just too small to do big dishes in so they bring them upstairs to wash. 

Since you have so many bedrooms, what if you turned one into a common area with a couch, TV and a little mini kitchen space? Maybe same scenario where there isn't a sink but at least you could relive some of the traffic off your main kitchen. 

FWIW, we rent 2 rooms in our basement. Its been an awesome source of income for us but they do have a private bath and dry kitchen. They occasionally come up to do dishes but otherwise have the means to do all of their cooking in their own space and they have their own dishes, pots and pans, etc. 

We did have laundry down there for them but it stopped working before our last tenant and we decided not to replace it - they go to the laundrymat rather than using ours

I agree the bigger issue is going to be the kitchen. No matter how good of tenants, you're going to be sharing your kitchenware, potentially having people leave dirty dishes in the kitchen, in their rooms, etc. 5 tenants is A LOT - how many bathrooms will they have to share between the 5 of them?

Also agree for the utilities it should be factored into the rent - same for internet, cable, etc. If you don't have central air, I'd charge an additional $25/mo (or whatever is reasonable for your area) for use of an air conditioner to cover that cost, that way people can choose not to use one to save a bit of money.

Critiques? Not sure I'd actually include the island, even if it had seating, just wanted to show how you might fill the space. Also contemplating open shelving on the L instead of cabinets. Main question is is it worth the money to shrink the window or do you think we can work around it? 

Also, can you put the stove next to a corner cabinet like that or will it not function right? Obviously you won't be able to have both open at once.

 If we resized the window then yes. Was supposed to meet with a contractor this morning for an estimate but got stood up. I like the light the window brings to the room and hesitate that shrinking it to start above the cabinets will make it awkwardly small but I'm open to that. It would definitely be the option that gives us the most traditional layout. 

 So first to clarify, that wasn't my diagram - it was one someone else suggested and it was missing a door. There are 4 - one to the back deck, one to the pantry, one to the living room and one into the hall. If we were going to eliminate one it would probably be the one to the hall... but then that leaves me with a dead end hallway. Closing the one to the living room makes all the space just feel small and clausterphobic. If I were going to go to that extent, I'd rather take out the wall between the kitchen and the living room and have an open floorplan with the sink wall being open and counter seating on the other side... unfortunately my budget doesn't allow that.

 Thanks for all the feedback. I agree it doesn't need a ton of storage, I just want to avoid the window looking awkward or a non-functional layout. We have the opportunity to start from scratch with everything torn out so I want to do the best we can to make it appealing. We're hoping to spend $12k or less on each unit which covers bathroom and kitchen redo + paint and a couple maintenance things. The apartment is an old house converted to a 4 plex that is well taken care of structurally but hasn't been cosmetically updated in decades. It had become more of a low end unit but being in a transitional neighborhood a mile from a private college and 2 miles from the downtown of our metro area, we want to revamp it to appeal to young professionals who want to be near downtown and the trendy spots without paying downtown rents. We have 3 1-br units and 1 2-br. They currently rent for $2k combined and I'm anticipating $3100 when all units are done with renovations. 

A search for awkwardly placed windows came up with this image... how odd would it be to do shelving over the window so you still get the light and keep the flow from one side to the other?