Kitchens

Beach House Kitchen Diary Part 2…What I Wish Was Here Originally

The closest photo I have ever been able to find of what my kitchen may have looked like originally is something like stylist Aaron Hom‘s at left. It’s a simple small white space, with a layout not too different from mine, not fancy – note the inexpensive old fashioned white refrigerator – but it has something I absolutely love – original kitchen cabinets with old glass doors. The counter is just wood and there is not a drop of stainless steel in sight. It just looks right in terms of time and place and if you scrolled yesterday’s photos I think you’d agree. Had the base color of my appliances and kitchen been white, I think I could have turned it into something approaching this, but the almond and the knowledge of the hidden wood floor and original beadboard under the sheet rock on the back wall (which I forgot to mention in the previous post) leaves me hungry for something more.

I still can’t help fantasizing about original cupboards – I just love them – in particular as so many of today’s fancy kitchens look all the same and just don’t suit my humble cottage space.

It’s an obsession I’ve had for years and it crushes me when I watch people rip out lovely old butlers pantries to make modern giant kitchens.

Even cobbling together old doors looks great.

If the house couldn’t come with any original cabinets, why couldn’t it have had an old cast iron sink with an integral drainboard? Here one is set into some original cabinetry…

…and here done in a more-for-looks-than-function newly installed old style. I just don’t think I can cook for 20 – and often we are that many – with a room that looks like this, however pretty!

I also love original wooden counter tops and drainboards and they are authentically found in houses here along the shore.

Look past the cute girl playing dress up (which is hard to do cause she’s so cute!) and you can see one in my friend’s house nearby.

But other than that aforementioned wall of beadboard and the pair of pretty windows, there is not much else old or original in my kitchen. The truth is I have been looking for four years, since we bought the house, hoping that some nearby late 19th or early 20th century house with original fittings will decide to remodel and somehow I will find out and be able to buy their stuff and magically make it fit. A bit of a pipe dream I know! My local contractor laughs every time I remind him to be on the lookout. For a while, I was tracking antique kitchen cupboards like this one on eBay, hoping to adapt them to my space. The problem with this idea is that I can wait forever and as I have so little space, it might not be possible to make something logical and efficient.

So I know I haven’t really moved forward in my kitchen story by delivering a whole post on the fantasy of what the house doesn’t have, but it certainly gives you a sense of my mindset.

Photo links can be found on my Beach House Kitchen Inspiration Pinterest page.

Jul 17, 2013 By tokyojinja in Kitchens, Renovation and Decoration Report

Beach House Kitchen Diary Part 1…Before and Currently

We are finally ready to tackle the main big project here at the beach house – the kitchen – so I’ll be posting all week on the subject. This was the original photo in the real estate listing and certain things were clear from the very beginning, including the fact that the kitchen was not very big at approximately 9 x 12 feet but that it was bright and sunny. In addition to 4 windows, the pair you see here and the larger pair over the sink, it had 3 doors, one in from the dining room, one leading back to the small side room we converted into a TV room and another door out to the porch which you can see open on the left of the photo. That leaves a fair amount of wall space challenge. Add to it the yellow paint and child-like wallpaper border, old linoleum floor, faux butcher block counter, grody uncentered sink with one of those tiny side compartments for the disposal and 1970s style laminate cabinets and you can see we have our work cut out for us. It doesn’t help either that the base color of all the appliances is almond which is definitely not my cup of tea.

A photo on the day we took possession does reveal the lovely french doors into the kitchen from the dining room. Unfortunately, the refrigerator sticks out so far that it is all you really notice when looking in from this angle. I’m going to take you on a tour, counter-clockwise as you enter.

A left turn through the door brings you to this cabinetry, which effectively blocks the door out to the porch. Note the aforementioned laminate cabinets and counter in all its glory.

Pivot 90 degrees to the side wall which had a table shoved against it in the real estate photo which would have kept you from opening the porch door or the oven. The curtains obscure a pretty shaped pair of original windows and are not at all necessary for privacy.

Pivot again and you are facing the back wall which has the stove on it. You can see a vintage kilim I brought from my house in Tokyo in the hopes that it would be a good color for the room and cover quite a bit of the grimy floor. Note one of my absolute favorite features of the kitchen (not!) – the side by side appliance look of the stove and dishwasher.

The sink has beautiful windows as well, also obscured by very unmatched curtains. The sink itself is made of some awful material that never looks completely clean and is an ugly pinky beige. The faucet isn’t centered on the window and the disposal side of the sink is almost useless.

Pivot again and you come to the wall on the right side of the kitchen as you enter, blessed with the behemoth fridge. As it sticks out so much, it basically renders this corner unusable.

And sliding your eye along brings you to the two remaining doors – the first one straight on being the original entrance to the now TV room, and the door frame mostly out of view on the right heading back out to the living room. Take note of the double door space leading into that extra room as there is a fairly deep vestibule between the two door frames that will eventually prove useful.

Now we have certainly managed to make some basic improvements since we moved in, including painting the kitchen Benjamin Moore Linen White – perhaps this post should really be called “The Magic of a Coat of Paint” – which has made the kitchen very tolerable. Linen White is not one of my favorites, but it is my mother’s long-term go to color (and thus a fixture of my childhood) for all things almond and a very close color match to the cabinetry. The other instantaneous change came after we took down all the curtains. The kilim really does help too, especially now that the bright yellow and primary colored border is gone. I’m doing a matched tour below, photo by photo, and just this view alone gives you a sense of how much has changed (although that fridge still is a behemoth!)

We removed the upper cabinet on this wall soon after moving in as it made the room feel very closed in. Being here for just the summer means that we just don’t need that much storage, so it was no loss. We also took out the lower cabinet planning to get rid of it too and float a small island instead, but we made the unexpected discovery that there is a hole in the linoleum underneath so for now it has to stay. The good news is the hole confirmed our belief that there is good wood floor under all that linoleum. That’s a check in the plus column for sure! I’m looking forward to restoring the transom above the porch door too.

This is what I meant about these windows having a lovely shape. And the trellis outside provides privacy. Don’t you think it would be charming to have small flower pots hung European style on the trellis so when you look out you have a pretty view?

Only recently, the faux tile behind the stove came loose, so I am pulling it out tomorrow and painting behind there too.

And a pretty half sheer may be necessary here if I can’t get the neighbors to hang their beach chairs lower!

Copper, baskets and no more ugly wallpaper border here.

The most major change came with our renovation of the TV room and downstairs bathroom in which we sealed the entrance from the kitchen and turned it to open into the living room/dining room. A full post on that renovation can be found here. The net benefit in the kitchen besides the improved traffic flow is the gaining of a pantry.

So this is where we stand today. Plain and functional but not my ideal. In the next few days I’ll be showing you what I wished was here and my ideas – both high and low – of what we might do.

If you are interested in seeing more of our beach house progress, earlier posts can be found in the Renovation and Decoration Report.

Jul 16, 2013 By tokyojinja in Kitchens, Renovation and Decoration Report Tags: beach house, kitchen, kitchen remodel, kitchen renovation, kitchens with rugs

Late Night Design Epiphanies

Just a quick post on a middle-of-the-night eureka moment I had not that long ago. About a month ago I wrote a post about using cement tiles in the entryway of the Brooklyn brownstone I’ve been working on again recently. Most of the examples I included were green in color, as that is what we had been thinking. But for some reason, I just couldn’t help including this set of robins egg blue tiles from Tierra Y Fuego. Something about them just felt right for the house!

The main project I am working on in the house is a full kitchen redo, which I have written about extensively here (more links below too). We have been planning on a white kitchen, which the homeowner has long dreamed of. But as these weeks have ticked away, it has been weighing on my mind that the kitchen is too white for the house, and doesn’t balance with the lovely dining area opposite.

Cue the epiphany now – using the tiles for a kitchen backsplash! I prepared my battle plan argument for my client – it goes something like this…The tiles would add so much in numerous ways. On one hand, they are very current (almost trendy) right now, while on the other they are a historic material perfect for the period of the house. The colors are ideal – the soft blue-green of the dining room, with a darker blue-teal to ground them and some cinnamon and white for contrast. They are neither too French, too Moroccan, nor too culturally specific. And for good measure, look back at the ceiling molding in the dining room photo – almost too perfect!

Needless to say, it didn’t take much convincing at all. We ordered a sample set of four tiles and they came promptly. But my client still needed to “see it” to “believe it” so she used an age old trick – the photocopier! She made copies of the tiles (only one set in color) and laid them out along the backsplash. Voilá! Instant visual!

Do you ever have late night design epiphanies?

May 3, 2013 By tokyojinja in Design Motif, Interior Design, Kitchens Tags: backsplash, Brooklyn browntone, cement tiles, encaustic tiles, kitchen renovation, Tierra Y Fuego

Form Versus Function…Inset or Overlay Cabinet Doors?

New cabinets = giant chunk of kitchen renovation budget. There is no escaping that equation. But no matter how big or small the kitchen is, one still needs a dishwasher, range, refrigerator, etc. so the relative ratio of expense for cabinets is lower in a small kitchen like the one I am working on. One of the good things about a small kitchen is that there simply aren’t that many cabinets involved, so it helps to keep the price down. That said, the existing cabinets are not that bad, so there needs to be a real improvement in space, organization and looks to make the change worthwhile.

It’s easy to pick out images that I know represent my client’s dream kitchen. Over and over again, it’s simple white Shaker-style cabinets with white stone counters. Invariably, the kitchens we love have inset doors on the cabinets – if you go back to the previous posts on this project you’ll see that is almost always the case. For those of you not familiar with this term, it means the cabinet doors are inset into the cabinet box, framed, like a piece of furniture, rather than attached over and covering the cabinet box. Sometimes the door hinges are hidden, like the ones in Michelle’s Mill Valley kitchen here.

Other times the hinges are visible on the inset doors like these here…

…and here. The Sheila Bridges kitchen has inset doors with exposed hinges too.

So what’s the conundrum here you ask? The problem is that inset doors on cabinets can cause you to lose space – not a lot – just an inch here or there – but considering the size of the kitchen we are working with – we feel like we can’t afford to lose any! The drawer units in particular lose width space from the framing, while the door units less so, although they do lose a bit of depth. Inset doors also tend to me more expensive – many are custom – but again price isn’t so much the issue as the kitchen is small. Space is the real issue we keep returning to.

In general we never like the overlay doors. Overlay doors tend to look like they came from box stores to me – ready made and much less like real furniture. The owner’s current kitchen has blond wood overlay cabinets – here’s the photo to remind you. These are at least “full overlay” in which you don’t see any of the cabinet box peeking out from the doors. I’m not going to even mention “partial overlay” cabinet doors – it would give us all some bad 1970s nightmares.

In trying to justify overlay panels we keep returning to Molly Frey’s portfolio. She routinely uses overlay doors and in fact, all the kitchens of her designs that I’ve seen use the same exact white cabinets.

See how the overlay doors almost touch and you see none of the surrounding framework? Some people prefer this look, particularly in modern design kitchens. You can also see that it maximizes the available space. I think the key to overlay doors is purchasing high-grade cabinets with a really nice paint finish. One thing to be cautious of with overlay panels is some of the mechanisms, for instance soft-close drawers, can be set in deeply on the sides, causing a loss of space. It would be depressing if we chose them for space reasons, only to be sabotaged by deeply set in drawers.

I did have what I thought was a genius idea, but it turns out many others have had it too. Why not use inset doors on the upper cabinets for style reasons – those are the ones that really get looked at and the space loss is minimal – and overlay panels on all the lower units, which are predominantly drawers? It’s definitely something to consider.

One of the inspiration kitchens we love is Joan’s New Hampshire kitchen here, which seems to have some sort of hybrid between overlay and inset doors. No surprise that these were custom built by a cabinet maker – if only we could get him to move from New Hampshire to Brooklyn.

So the big questions are whether we care more about looks or space. What say you all? Form or function?

Jan 26, 2013 By tokyojinja in Interior Design, Kitchens Tags: brownstone kitchen, cabinets, kitchen, kitchen remodel, kitchen renovation, kitchens

Form Versus Function…White Marble Countertops? Really?

One of the main components of the Brooklyn kitchen renovation I am working on is white stone countertops of some sort. In the Sheila Bridges inspiration photos, heck, all of our inspiration photos, the counters are white marble. My clients are amazing cooks – or shall we say “he” is an amazing cook – a hard working and hard wearing cook – who doesn’t always worry about spills along the way. Their current counter is a dark man-made material, so there has been no need to worry about wiping up that turmeric right away or stressing over the coffee and red wine served daily. That said, spills against a dark surface don’t show so you don’t feel as prompted to wipe them up immediately. The “she” of the household is a wonderful baker and marble counters are perfect for rolling out dough. So while we love the look of white marble countertops, and know they are great for baking, we worry whether they are actually functional for cooking? Won’t they stain, etch, show every little imperfection? Don’t they demand slavish care?

In the home decorating world these questions rank up there with other biggies like “What is the meaning of life?”

As a result, many have addressed this topic already and addressed it very well. The folks over at Apartment Therapy have wrestled with it numerous times and have hundreds of pro and con comments on their site. A low-key looking site called The Garden Web is an outstanding source of information with numerous threads on the topic (for instance here,). Searching the web I found amazing posts such as the one from Greg at The Petch House (he’s restoring an 1895 Victorian) in which he tests a piece of marble, both sealed and unsealed, with the its classic nemeses – red wine, acidic fruit and tomato sauce. Two years later, he reports that his counters have held up extremely well without a lot of special care.

So while white marble has a bad rap as being hard to care for, my instincts tell me that while this can be true, it can’t be the whole truth. Marble has been used for centuries for counters, tables and floors and held up extremely well during that time. Personally, a little patina makes everything better in my book. Research around the web, particularly the many first hand accounts in this vein on Garden Web…

“You need to do a search on Marble threads in this forum – there are MANY of us who have marble countertops (mostly honed) and LOVE them and have no staining issues at all.”

…make me optimistic about considering a white marble. Marble is simply calcium carbonate, just like chalk, but in a compressed and crystallized form. It’s the calcium in it that makes it easily etched by acid. But it does seem that sealants have come a long way in the last few years in preventing etching and staining. Honing the counter which is the matte finish I prefer, rather than polishing it to a shine, also helps in the battle against marks.

In terms of choosing what type of marble, trust Joni at Cote de Texas to have covered the choices pretty exhaustively in her post on the subject. She chose Calacutta Ora for her remodel.

But before we rush into the choice, it’s a big enough decision that full research is necessary. As I am not a geologist, it has taken me a while to understand the differences between marble, granite, quartzite and manmade quartz materials such as Silestone, Cambria and Caesarstone. Granite is the hardest of the stones and the most resistant to staining and etching. But it doesn’t come in a true white and tends to be very busy and speckled, as opposed to veined. Quartzite is a metamorphic rock formed from sandstone and tends to be white and greys. It is more stain resistant than marble, but has been known to etch if calcium is present and it is unsealed. That said, when sealed it looks to be a very good option. The different brands of engineered quartz all seem good and hold up to the staining and etching tests, but they look artificial to my eye, certainly in a more traditional kitchen. Cate at Girl Cooks World has done a fantastic (and very recent) post comparing many of the stone and stone like options currently available out there, but we will need to go see them all in person ourselves.

Even after choosing the material we want, in the end, the choice will come down to seeing the exact slab for this kitchen. The variations in the marbles and quartz are so extreme that samples are only indicative, not conclusive. One Garden Web forum poster chose to use Bianco Macabus quartzite because of this exact slab at their stone yard. I can see why.

I’ll keep you up to date on what we discover, but I am hoping to hear from all of you too. The comments on my previous post about the sink and faucet were so helpful.

Jan 21, 2013 By tokyojinja in Interior Design, Kitchens Tags: brownstone kitchen, counter, countertops, kitchen remodel, kitchen renovation, marble, quartz, quartzite, white marble counter

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