Project Overview

This project, like many of ours, started as a referral from a past client, the Borgias. It shows that good friends share many similarities and traits, including likes and dislikes. This client picked the same door style as their friends with a different color stain, and a different design solution that fit this very different space.

This client’s kitchen space offered very interesting and unique architectural features, like the vaulted ceilings and greenhouse window roof. It had some very difficult existing size and shape restrictions that, combined with the clients unique needs and our ability to maximize some of the odd shaped spaces with custom storage options, lead to a very unique kitchen solution that really fit this client’s needs and looks great.

In essence, this is an odd shaped corridor kitchen with the door to the garage and laundry at one end, and the dining great room at the other. Our solution flowed from the functional needs at both ends of the kitchen, and in between.

The end of the kitchen facing the dining/great features a small bar counter with stools that is painted white to act as a visual separator between the two areas. It has a set of custom flush mount drawers, the top drawer having an outlet inside for recharging phones and tablets.

The opposite end of the kitchen at the garage & laundry entrance has two custom cabinets. One is very shallow 3” dishwasher end panel cabinet that serves as a valet with plenty of key hooks, accessory, and document storage solutions. The other is the angled face cabinet next to the refrigerator which the client uses as a hot beverage station. Due to the positioning of this cabinet immediately behind the refrigerator, kettles and coffee making appliances can sit on the countertop while remaining out of sight from most angles when looking into the kitchen from the front of the kitchen, while storage space in the cabinet underneath keeps mugs and insulated portable beverage containers on hand and out of sight. The immediate proximity of both of these cabinets to the sink, refrigerator, and garage door, make this a convenient area to store and retrieve all the small last minute items a person needs before leaving home.

The middle of the room really reflects this clients choice of storage and design uniqueness. On one side we made the most of the vaulted ceilings by stacking shorter wall cabinets with textured glass front uplift doors on top of standard 30” wall cabinets. The base cabinets on that same wall all have 3 drawers made to custom (but consistent) sizes that would fit what items she planned to store there.

The opposite side of corridor kitchen housing the fridge has short wall cabinets with lift up textured glass front doors. The base cabinets that are only 2 drawers high, but are also made to custom and consistent drawer sizes to accommodate their intended use of stacking dishes and storing larger pots. This type of custom drawer storage requires careful calculations and planning and also the right drawer guides and bottoms that will hold the weight of the drawer contents without breaking down in the future. You simply can not get these level of customizability elements from store bought cabinets.

Lastly, the client chose a natural stone countertop made from Dolomite, because she fell in love with the color. It is a bit softer and more porous than Granite or Quartzite, but the client was willing to do the extra maintenance required to properly care for this product to get its look.