If the fridge is visually too much for you, you could maybe get some of those fridge wrap things that people use to spruce up appliances.
I love the Morris-y ones like this on etsy.
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It’s a Frigidaire 20.3 cu ft. Bottom Freezer Refrigerator in Smudge Proof Stainless Steel, counter depth. The top is spacious and I love not having to bend over to peer into the back of the fridge. The freezer is ok and the ice maker is a bit wimpy, but with our specs, we had limited choices. Luckily there are only two of us and we have a small chest freezer in the basement. I have no idea how ro arrange things, they will just have to find their place on their own.
We will be moving the door to the dining room and adding a window while taking out a window for the fridge which is moving to the right wall. This will make a u shaped kitchen. The sink and stove walls will remain the same.
So struggling with colors, I love the copper tones (it’s too damaged to keep and impossible to clean) but with all stainless steel, I’m wondering .
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I think the fridge looks massive, it would be difficult to find a fridge this big where we live (we don’t eat less food, we just go shopping more often).
I like the details in your current kitchen, like the small drawers left of the sink. What I’m always surprised about in American homes is that people put their appliances in full sight. Most people here build their appliances in to hide them, because we don’t like the sight. American kitchens seem designed to show off appliances.
Our galley kitchen is so small it’s hard to take a picture of lol, but this is our fridge, underneath the oven. The dishwasher is in the cupboard on the right. Our fridge is small for our country as well, by the way, but big enough for us. We put our old fridge in the garage but we hardly use it.
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I try to keep my small appliances hidden away in cabinets, but it becomes a pain to get one when I need it. It seems like the one I need is always the one behind the others. 
One of my friends, with a much larger house than mine, has a small appliance walk-in pantry. They are all put away nicely on shelves, but easily accessible when needed.
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Part of the reason for this is that the appliances made to accept a panel that matches the cabinetry are quite a bit more expensive. Not just because of that feature, but because they usually only offer that feature in higher-end models and brands. I think most Americans would rather their appliances blend in, but it’s not available to them. Also, if you’re putting a new appliance into an existing kitchen you’re very unlikely to be able to get a convincing match to your cabinets.
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Fitting into our current kitchen is our goal to keep costs down. Our cabinets are Home Depot specials, but only 20 years old and you can still get Shaker style for the cabinets for the remodel. The doors do need a refinish.
The little drawers are both useful and annoying. They each hold one category of tool, like knives. But they don’t hold much. Cute though.
We were awed by the size of standard fridges, who needs that much food stashed away? The only time we need more space is holidays and spaghetti sauce making time in August (we have big pots of sauce cooling in the fridge.) But we manage.
And appliance costs are ridiculously high. And I don’t need my appliances to talk to me or each other. Silly.
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I like practicality in my kitchen so I keep out appliances we use daily: electric can opener, coffee grinder, coffee maker, toaster and rice cooker. Other appliances are kept in a huge closet, things like a crock pot, mixer, etc. What I don’t like are hidden garbage cans or a place to put a garbage can. I am getting an island that is open to the kitchen side but closed to the dining side so I can tuck my garbage and recycling bins under but use them easily.
If we had more neighboring markets and stores with fresher foods, it would be mean more trips to them so less need of storing foods. I loved being in Japan where you could stop in to get whatever you were eating that night…it was convenient and so tasty to pick up fresh veggies, prepared foods, bread, etc.
Jim and I were going to have the fridge cabinet removed so we could get the fridge we wanted but the cost was almost the same as the fridge!! We are just going to get one that fits, which is still pretty large by European/Asian standards.We realized that now that we are “retired”, we do go to the stores more often so we didn’t need to “store” food as much. If we forget something, we can easily go get it or improvise.
I think the thing I miss the most about American kitchens is how it used to be more cobbled together and mismatched…it felt homey to me to be in my great grandma’s home where they bought used appliances whenever they had the money and didn’t care about the looks…lots of regular furniture or cabinets were used and not all built ins. My GGma had aprons hanging on hooks and brooms and mops hanging on the walls and fry pans hanging from the ceiling…simpler times.
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Oh, that’s one major difference then - the built-in appliances are not more expensive here and widely available at budget chains like Ikea. If your kitchen is older or not from a major chain it can indeed be difficult to get matching panels if you don’t have them. I know when I lived at home we had an appliance without a panel for a long time, because they weren’t available anymore, and in those days, built-in appliances were cheaper and my parents weren’t going to pay extra just for looks. The panels are typically standard-sized and screwed on so they can normally be re-used or replaced when damaged.
@AIMR I love the cobbled together look, our old kitchen looked like that and in our street there’s even a lady who still has the original 1940s kitchen! But after 8 years of cleaning behind and between the stove, the fridge, on top of shelves etc I knew I was going to have a built-in everything from floor to ceiling kitchen! It’s seriously 90% less cleaning. This was our old kitchen.
We have an extra little counter (only 16" deep) for our small appliances. The kitchen guy said I was going to regret it but I don’t. It makes our galley kitchen quite narrow but it also means you stand in the same spot all the time, it’s very efficient. We have a couple of small appliances that we use infrequently, but these are what we use every day or are too heavy to move.
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I believe that our fridge storage challenge is not only because it is a small fridge, but also because TheMisterT cooks every day and from a broad variety of cuisines. That means we have condiments/sauces/mixtures/chutneys/etc. for a lot of different cultural flavor profiles. Plus, I like a variety of mustards! 
We really do use our “extra” fridge! Certainly for beverages, but also leftovers and about half our produce. We’ve gotten really good at minimizing food waste, too.
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My husband also likes to cook a lot of ethnic foods, so we got some rolling carts and sort of filled them by type of cuisines. He most does Asian foods, so that cart if filled with spices, ingredients and sauces. We keep the dried fungi and rice papers, etc. in a basket in the pantry, but he just rolls the cart to the stove as he cooks and then shoves it back into it’s place.
@Immaculata --your old kitchen is the look I like, but yes, as you said, the cleaning is more difficult. Plus, tastes change and many people like their kitchen to blend in with a more clean cut look. A friend of mine bought a mid-century modern home and hates her kitchen. She used to live on a farm and had lots of nice wooden cabinets, shelves, etc. and now, the cabinets are shiny laminate, lots of stainless steel, hard floor tiles…she says it is also harder to keep clean or at least look clean. I have a feeling she is going to be renovating it soon.
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Our non-refrigerated stuff lives in either the cabinet pantry or a pantry under the stairs, except that which lives in an upper cabinet next to the stove - that is the liquids, pastes, and powders. Legumes, dried chilis, and dried mushrooms live in 6 metal bins I bought online, 3 each in two places. Most rices in a big bin in the mudroom.
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I found a dead mouse in the living room today, pretty close to the wall to the basement / pantry. And some droppings right in the middle of the basement floor, where you’d notice them if they’d been there before. You know, the basement we emptied out in November, then closed off all the mice tunnels with mortar, after we’d filled them up with mice-proof mesh, then tiled the floor and the wall of as a last layer of defense. That basement.
The best case scenario is that this mouse somehow still lived in the house somewhere, that we’d closed off all the access roads so he couldn’t get out anymore, that he might have slipped into the basement when we’d left the door open or something, and that after weeks of living here on his own, he finally died of old age and it just happened to be in my living room.
But I’m afraid to make sure we’re not dealing with the worst case scenario, we’ll have take all the furniture away from the walls and empty out the pantry again to see if there’s anything we missed.
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Ugh. I once batted the mice. The only thing that worked was the bait trap so now I just try not to think of all the petrified mice somewhere in my house.
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Oh, no! Mice are horrid little creatures. They’re adorable, but make terrible housemates.
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Mice are so horrible. I hate finding their droppings and something they’ve been chewing on. We keep almost everything in glass, but they will still run across jar lids, toileting along their way. YUCK!
The first bits of work are getting done at the new place! A plumber found an uncapped pipe in the crawl space, the source of an occasional stench. That’s fixed now & we’ve an estimate for a junk hauler to clean out the whole basement & another estimate (cha-CHING 
) to seal the dirt floor with plastic sheeting & spray foam as well as a dehumidifier/air purifier. None of that will be seen but it’s all very important.
Rob’s talked to a contractor about creating a separate entrance for the up & downstairs spaces.
But most exciting, an electrician moved some outlets so the fridge and stove could swap spots.
Before:
After:
It just makes so much more sense to have the stove by the prep area rather than on the far side of the galley kitchen and having us trying to squeeze around each other back-and-forth back-and-forth to get from the counter & cutting surface to the stove.
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A lot more functional!
Getting the underpinnings done properly is very important. Looks like you are getting the necessary rooms done nicely! Love those big rustic beams and corbels!
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What a beautiful space!
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That’s stove!!! 
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The stove is only good to look at, functionally it’s not so great. We got metal/glass instant pot & airfryer/oven to help. One day we’ll replace the stove but for now the priority is tiling a splash & figuring out venting. If the chimney to the right is accessible to the roof, we may be in luck! Otherwise a ductless filter may be the best we can manage.
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What a lovely space! And functionality always wins.
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