We had our kitchen remodeled, and I insisted on keeping the working part pretty close together -- we went from a galley to something larger, but I am glad I kept the fridge-sink-stove pretty near one another. I also thought about sequencing (they are in that order as that's the order I typically work in), and am glad I did. Our counters are tile (installed by us and great because you can put hot stuff directly on the counter), but between the fridge and the sink is a slab of butcher block that, again, I am so glad we had put in. I work on it all the time. Below it (just under some fairly narrow drawers) there is a large, sturdy board (not butcher block) that can be pulled out; it's the depth of the counters (so basically just a board insert that slides out like a drawer). Again, love it -- great for stacking groceries on when I bring them home or stuff on when I get it out, or for working on while seated (and it just rolls back in when not in use.
Other than that, my kitchen equipment is guided by the following principles: I don't generally want one-function items (the coffee maker is, I'll admit, an exception, but an oft-used oned); I want decent quality multipurpose equipment. For us that includes a reasonable-sized toaster oven that gets a fair amount of use (more than the big oven, in fact), a Kitchen Aid mixer (with a food grinder attachment), a fairly standard assortment of pots & pans, decently sharp knives, and standard cooking equipment (wooden spoons, ladle, spatula). Oh, and a crockpot. DS has a pizza stone and paddle, which I'm not too excited about, but anything that DH wants for cooking he can have. We do have a contraption to hang pots from, a small rack on the wall for lids, and a magnetic bar on the wall that holds commonly used spices (decanted into metal tins, labeled with me having written on them using a Sharpie) and has hooks off which measuring cups hang. Oh, and a 6 (?) piece set of the kind of stoneware you can put in a hot oven to roast stuff and not worrying about it cracking.
I've lived over the years (grad school, etc.) with cheap and/or ill-suited to my needs cookware, but at some point I realized it's precisely because I don't much like to cook (or otherwise prepare food) that it makes sense (for me) to pay more for decent quality (not fancy) equipment. Also, over the years of our marriage we've used gifting occasions (birthdays, Christmas) to buy kitchenware for each other.