Kitchen Redux

We've chattered on a lot about kitchens, haven't we? Oliver posted about our spice rack(s) a while back, I wrote about small kitchens that make big statements, and I've mentioned them in passing in other posts. Well, I'm bringing kitchens into the discussion again, but this time, we're talking about ours. You could say our kitchen falls into the "small" category – it's literally one strip of wall in our living room. We have 28 square inches of counter space. You read that correctly: 28 INCHES. So, don't complain to me about your ginormous country kitchen with 55 overhead cabinets and 87 base cabinets! Por ejemplo:

Dual islands, a double oven, a desk...I don't want to hear it! 
Here's what we were working with when we moved:

What's with the mirror in the kitchen, you ask? I have no idea. A generous leftover from the previous tenant. Thanks?
Despite the small size, we use our kitchen to make nearly every meal we eat (self-employed+home office+people who like to cook=lots of meals made and eaten at home). It works quite well now, but it took some work. With no where to hide pots and pans, it was pretty cluttered on top of the refrigerator for a while:

We knew we needed a pot/pan/lid solution, but unfussy, affordable wall-mounted pot racks are hard to come by! Eventually, we came to terms with the fact that we would have to make it ourselves, which is where the pegboard came in. Diamond Life allows you to specify the size you want and they cut it down. They also sell the hooks for super cheap – the whole thing cost about $30.

Before painting the board, we laid out the pot/pan configuration:

Oliver painted the board with leftover gray paint from our walls so it blends in and provides a fantastic backdrop for the luxurious Le Creuset pots and pans we were given by some extremely generous wedding guests.

We've managed to get as much stuff on to the walls as possible, since our storage space is limited and, while there's no way to hide the fact that we have a kitchen in the middle of our living room, it seems to work without being a complete eyesore.


UPDATE: My colleague Thomas was kind enough to point out my fuzzy math skills regarding our countertop space. We actually have 2.3 square feet of countertop. That's more than 28 square inches, but not exactly spacious! Regardless, my apologies for the faulty calculations.