Hi,
I started writing this on an airplane heading to Boston with my teenage son. It is hard to believe that technology is such that I can do a post on my blog at 30,000 feet above the ground! I have posted my own portfolio photos of my kitchen before, here, and I wrote about the design inspirations behind the kitchen. I love my portfolio pictures, but I also think Tria Giovan did a fantastic job with the photos for Beautiful Kitchens. It’s interesting how different the color of my cabinetry looks than in my portfolio photos, which are closer to reality than the BK photos are. See what I mean?
Photograph by Tria Giovan, Beautiful Kitchens
This is a wider shot and shows more of the ceiling, obviously, but you can see the difference in the way that the pale yellow reads in each photo.
Here is the Beautiful Kitchens overall shot, taken from a slightly different angle. It shows the two islands, our refrigerator and pantry and our cabinetry wall. The two islands came about as a result of the vaulted ceiling, interestingly. The central point of the vault makes such a strong architectural statement that I felt that the central axis leading from it in both directions had to be symmetrical. Originally, we had planned one island that would house the ovens and drawers and would serve as a breakfast bar. But in order to situate the island close enough to the sink to be useful and to stay centered in the room, the single island would be absolutely enormous. Eric Greene from Jackson Hole Cabinetry taped the cabinets out on the floor in various configurations over the course of many long hours. Finally we came upon a solution that worked – two islands, connected to one another, with different heights, surfaces and paint finishes. I am so happy with the result. Sometimes the most difficult problems present you with the most creative solutions, and I think that was the case with the islands. William Ohs did the actual cabinetry and it is just so well made and well finished that I could not be more thrilled.
Here is the range. I have a Wolf stove with two typical burners, a grill and something called a French burner. The French burner, which is underneath the cutting board, is a flat expanse of metal with concentric rings marked on it. At the center of the rectangle the heat is the most intense and at the edges it is least intense, with the idea being that you can fit many pots and pans on it. This is the only element of the kitchen that I regret. The burner takes thirty minutes to get hot enough to do anything! I am not disciplined enough to turn something on 30 minutes before I need it. This small detail was nowhere in the manufacturers information when I ordered it. At some point, I may have this part of the range replaced with a conduction cooktop. The great thing about Wolf rangetops is that they offer different components in different configurations, so I can simply replace this component for another.
You probably want to know about the hood. This was cause for a lot of design back and forth. I wanted a very, very simple shape that was shallow and not overbearing. We finally got the shape that we wanted and then the next challenge was to have it fabricated. I wanted a zinc hood to coordinate with the zinc countertop. However, zinc sheets are not as wide as the base of the hood, and to use zinc we would have needed to rivet the front pieces to side pieces, which was not at all the clean look I wanted. In the end, we used sheet metal to form the hood and my painter did a wonderful finish to mimic the zinc countertop.
The drawers below the cooktop are for pots and pans and the have pegboard and pegs in them to keep things tidy. This is a feature that I had from my Mark Wilkinson cabinetry in London and I loved it. It really does keep things in their place, so much so that I am able to store plates, bowls, etc, in drawers rather than in cabinets. This makes it so much easier for my kids to help themselves. Here is an image of a china drawer.
I love how versatile this is and the placement of the pegs means that things don’t rattle around.
This is a closer view of the range. The backsplash is an antique French fireplace back and the tile is limestone from Ann Sacks. I wanted a herringbone pattern as that is more in keeping with a true hearth. I have a spice pullout on the right of the stove and a pullout for oils and vinegars on the left. So handy for cooking! Also, my knife drawer is directly across from the stove, so my meal preparation goes on right in this area. It is very, very convenient for how I cook.
Just to the right of the stove is the butler’s pantry, which leads to the dining room. I originally wanted to bring some red into this area to tie it to the dining room, but in the end the mountain came to Mohammed and I took some of the soft yellow and charcoal into the dining room. I kept the X motif that is prevalent in the house and especially in the uppers in these cabinets and the kitchen cabinets. To dress up the space, I had the cabinets painted the near black that is everywhere in my house and did a dressier Bouvet hardware in satin nickel on them. The brass version is on the china cabinets in the dining room. I toyed with the idea of doing an antique mirror backsplash, but in the end I decided that the golden onyx countertops were flashy enough, and I am so happy that I left the backsplashes in both kitchen and butler’s pantry alone. They tend to be superfluous unless you have a working sink or a cooktop in the area and they can get very expensive, to boot. The butler’s pantry has a warming drawer, an icemaker and two drawer style dishwashers that I LOVE. They are perfectly sized for china and crysal and are great overflow dishwashers for the main one in the kitchen. If I had a smaller family or were an empty nester, I would install these as my primary dishwasher in a heartbeat. They use much less water, are quiet and obviously slip into a small space. I guess that I am a little drawer happy!
This is my refrigerator and pantry unit. The shelves with the “books” house my pantry. and the doors with the X motif are my two refrigerator units. The two huge drawers are in reality four freezer drawers and again, I LOVE them. No more digging around to find things. We tend to keep things more segregated and organized this way. This is a design idea that I used in my previous house in New Jersey, and the beauty of it is that I set my groceries down on the countertop and all the food goes in one area. For the faux books I originally wanted to use book titles that had to do with wine or food, but when I realized the cost would be astronomical, I decided to use the titles that the company provides as part of its line. Here is a peek at a freezer drawer.
Again, so convenient for my kids and for me to get to food. We can all easily see what’s in there and with four drawers, there is enough storage room for even my big family. More drawer happiness!
Here is the pull out for my pantry. Again it is so easy to see where things are and so accessible. While I love the way my kitchen looks, I am more in love with how well it functions. There is one last purely visual detail that I want to show you for the glass fronted cabinets. Nothing practical, just a detail that Jackson Hole Cabinetry specifies in all its William Ohs glass cabinetry that is just fantastic.
They do a wooden edge around the glass shelves, so that when you look at the cabinet, the edge looks solid, rather than the greenish edge that glass has. But the shelf itself is glass, which allows any downlighting to go straight through to the bottom shelf. It’s beautiful and so detail oriented. And before you ask, the pottery pattern is Black Toast by Emma Bridgewater and we bought it when we lived in London. Very pretty.
I learned so much on this photo shoot with Bonnie Broten and Tria Giovan. Bonnie is a great stylist and Tria is a master photographer. She and Janet, her fantastic assistant, were just fascinating to watch. Bonnie styles by imagining a “story” that is happening in the room and what would need to be out and where in order for the story to take place. It is all, truly, theater.
Well, I for one, am so relieved that this story is published. So many of the projects that I work on happen on the island in the kitchen and I have been so worried about showing too much of it in the background when I photograph things. The same is true for the breakfast room. Now I can show you whatever I like and it will be old news to you! Do go and buy the magazine, though. There are lots of beautiful kitchens in it – the name delivers what it promises!- and the article is fun reading. Plus there is a great shot of the breakfast room that I haven’t shown you.
And I am sorry that I have been offline. I have been traveling so much to lacrosse tournaments and camps that I just have not had the uninterrupted time that I needed to sit down and do some thoughtful posts. So, I am back for a bit, and I will be posting a likely blizzard in the next few days.
Kristin