Can a small kitchen be made desirable?

[BewareTheBeardedDragon]

I have a small kitchen - 3 x 2.5m galley. It's attached to the dining room - which is also 3 x 2.5m, so sort of eat in, but not exactly because it's not one room - it's two with a large opening to pass between (2m wide opening in the 2.5m width).

Originally I was planning to extend, before covid. Now prices have gone so mad I can no longer afford to do so, and so I'm scaling back plans to just re-do current kitchen.

The galley layout is actually really great for one cook. It gets a bit annoying when more people are in there.

The thing is, I can't see that I will ever be able to afford to extend now, and the kitchen is beginning to fall to pieces. But I feel nervous about investing in such a small space. Can a small kitchen ever be desirable? I'm not planning to sell, this is my forever home barring something completely unexpected, I'll prob be here for 20/30 yrs.

Also could or would you consider relocating the back door to allow for an L shape kitchen?

Extending smaller table and run the worktop the full 6m across the back wall?

Opening is just open - no door.

I don't want to do a run along the full 6m because it doesn't leave enough space to comfortably sit 8 around the table, which we do regularly when we have guests.

I'm not sure what the benefit of an L shape would be, because it would introduce and awkward corner unit, and give less storage and worktop I think?

Internal corners are not a good use of space at all.

In my last house we had a tiny galley kitchen (2.5 x 2.2m) with door to outside at one end, and a bigger dining room (3.8 x 3.4m). We had a sort run of lower units in the dining room with open shelving which I used for storage (plates, glasses etc). Still left space for a large table. Kitchen itself had wall storage on one side only. We ended up moving to a different city but I had intended doing a very high end renovation if I’d stayed- the high end companies are far more affordable in tiny spaces!

Those Devol kitchens are beautiful but about twice the size of mine!