“This was the first time we got to choose and work on a kitchen
for us,” says the wife. “I wanted the kitchen to be contemporary, but I
didn’t want it to go too far, because our house and neighborhood are
very traditional.”
Working with LDa architect Carter Williams, they decided not
to change the footprint of the 470-square-foot kitchen, which is next
to the family room and has a breakfast nook overlooking a large deck
and the backyard. Instead, they wanted to take full advantage of the
room’s volume and 12-foot height and turn an awkward space into one
that was family friendly and aesthetically pleasing.
“We regularized the geometry of the room first,” says Williams,
who also helped upgrade the adjacent mudroom and laundry and the
small bar area that links the kitchen with the dining room. “The ceiling
had two different inclines,” adds the architect. “By aligning the flat part
with the room’s centerline and then making those inclines the same,
we could introduce false beams that define and make sense of the volume.” Those beams, beautifully crafted to look old by layering aged
spruce planks on top of 2-by-6-inch boards, were inspired by antique
timber beams in a farmhouse in France, where the family vacations.
Rustic but still fitting with the clean aesthetic, the beams draw the eye
upward and balance the room’s style and composition.
The island brings it all back down to earth. At a whopping 4½
feet wide by 14½ feet long with a countertop of 3-inch-thick Caesar-
stone that wraps each end and continues to the floor, it’s “the larg-
est kitchen island I’ve ever designed,” says Williams. Its size allows
for multiple roles, from meal-preparation work space to homework
central to late-night hangout. “The kids are constantly bringing their
friends in,” says the wife. “When we have large groups over, the island
becomes a buffet.”
Michele Kelly of Venegas and Company, a kitchen studio and
showroom at the Boston Design Center, led the design of the cabine-
try, which is white oak with a brushed milk paint finish in warm gray
pewter. Perimeter cabinets have simple doors with a raised profile,
while the long wall, which acts as a pantry and conceals a small desk,
has random V-groove paneling. “The island is a hybrid of both,” says
Kelly. “The working side is simple like the perimeter, but the back side,
underneath the overhang, has random paneling.” There, touch latches
open to 12-inch-deep compartments. “We put storage anywhere we
could,” says the designer.
Upstairs, the master bath is a relaxing space. Floating cabinetry
placing the shower in the corner of the bath (facing page) allowed the
luxuries of a freestanding tub and a longer vanity. The toe kick of the vanity’s
rift-cut white oak cabinetry (left top), finished in a gray stain to
resemble driftwood, is outfitted with light strips, enhancing the
floating illusion when they illuminate the porcelain tile floor. Simple
mirrors open to recessed cabinets. For the countertop (left bottom),
Calacatta Saturnia marble in a textured leather finish plays off the simplicity
of the cabinets and the clean lines of the chrome faucets.
