The time has arrived for the unveiling of our transformed show house kitchen.

Our entire team worked hard to create this sophisticated, functional kitchen that highlights symmetry and repeats the soft curves found in the architecture throughout the home. I’m excited to have the opportunity to highlight my new hood designs in partnership with Francois & Company. The pewter hood is elegantly framed by perfectly bookmatched slabs of marble artfully sculpted to follow the lines of the hood.

Mary Kathryn, Laurie, Patti, Robin, myself and our team look forward to meeting you and sharing the features of this show house kitchen.

For more information on the Show House, please visit decoratorsshowhouse.com.

So we now have a fabulous new kitchen layout that functions well and breathes new life into this space.  However, as always, the details will make or break it and we still have some challenges ahead of us such as the ceiling height and low windows in front of the sinks.

I have found the best way to “raise” a ceiling is to paint the walls and ceiling the same color.  If there is a color change between the wall and ceiling, you have drawn attention to the one line in the room you are trying to hide.  Furthermore, painting the cabinets the same color as the walls will allow them to visually recede into the walls enlarging the space.  Minimizing wall cabinets and using tall groupings of appliances and storage will also help “verticalize” the space.   Again, instead of drawing the eye down and horizontal to the space between the countertop and wall cabinet, a tall cabinet becomes one vertical element and makes us look up.  Wall cabinets were unavoidable in this kitchen but by attaching panels to them that extend to the countertop, “hutch ends”, we will further elongate that all important vertical line.

Placing the sinks in front of the windows that overlook the front yard is essential to the new plan, however, the window sill is 12” lower than the countertop.  A well will have to be created between the window and sink to allow access to the window. Finishing the back side of the cabinet and installing a decorative backsplash from the countertop material turns this challenge into a design opportunity.  I actually had this same situation at the 2006 ASO Showhouse where I used a wood countertop and a marble sink.

Challenges conquered, now it is time to select all of the gorgeous colors, materials and surfaces.  I always start with the floor as it is becomes the foundation of the design scheme.  Here we were working with an existing oak floor but we were able to stain it darker using my favorite mix of half Jacobean and half Special Walnut stains.  Next I like to pick countertops and luckily, Marmi found us the most amazing marble on the planet.  So now that we have two major decisions done, we can work on completing the rest of this “outfit”.  A taupe colored suit would complement the dark brown shoes and our marbled dress shirt with accents of merlot, sage, greys and taupes, therefore, we will paint our perimeter cabinets taupe and the island cabinets a slightly darker shade of the same color just for fun.  This taupe color will look great next to the two stainless steel Dacor refrigerators.  The pewter and scagliola hood, a Matthew Quinn Collection exclusive from Francois and Co., becomes the hat, the camel-glazed ceramic tile from Renaissance Tile becomes the tie, the black walnut island tops from Craft-Art the belt to match the shoes and the polished nickel sconces and hardware from Matthew Quinn Collection the cufflinks and watch.

The patterns, shapes and trims are next and an important step in marrying this new kitchen to the existing homes architecture.  Adding soft curves and circles to the rooms rectangular shape and existing beamed ceiling seemed right.  Fortunately, we had many elements to inspire us with interesting iron, lead and millwork designs throughout the house.

The mirrored doors over the ovens were inspired by the clearstory window.

The sink and hood backsplash were inspired by the crown molding in the living room.

We custom made the gently radiused stainless steel apron front sinks complete with a gooseneck faucet by Matthew Quinn Collection for the Rubinet Faucet Co. 

Perfect circles of pewter are recessed into the walnut island countertops playing off the round chandeliers above.

Together, this ensemble is timeless, sophisticated, elegant, textural, colorful and head turning.  And, yes, I am “dressing” this kitchen with lots of my own MQC products, but why would I not wear things that I love.  

On Friday, I will reveal as much as I can without breaking any indecent exposure laws…..

The new kitchen layout illustrates a few features that are unique to kitchen designs in the last few years.

1. Children participate more in the preparation of a meal.  With the popularity of the Food Network channel and shows like Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen, kids want to learn to cook and experiment with new foods.  Therefore, today’s kitchen plans have to be able to accommodate multiple cooks with clearly defined zones, wider aisles, lots of countertop space and sometimes more appliances.
2. The Smartphone has virtually eliminated the need for a real desk in a kitchen.  Email, calendars, phone directories are all at our fingertips; so besides a place to stash mail, some recipes, stationary, and grocery lists, a stool at the island will usually fit the bill.
3. We shop for groceries more often now and purchase fresher foods.  Therefore, we don’t need as much freezer capacity.  However, the variety of foods we purchase and consume is greater so today we actually need more refrigerator and pantry storage.
4. The days of one set of everyday china are gone.  From our favorite cooking shows and restaurants we have learned that presentation is half the meal.  Lots of affordable dinnerware in many shapes, colors and patterns is a must for today’s kitchen which makes two dishwashers the norm. 

Design Galleria's kitchen floorplan

The most noticeable difference is the island orientation.  Two square islands running lengthwise will eliminate the traffic issues one long island would cause with multiple cooks.  Two islands will also provide more usable countertop space than one large island.  But no worries, we have both bases covered.  Out from under the seating island, a large wood countertop will slide out and connect both islands, in case that was preferred by whoever was cooking that day.   The desk was eliminated and will be replaced with two 36” wide Dacor refrigerators with bottom freezers.  Putting these large units on this side of the kitchen will also make the view into the kitchen from the breakfast room much more appealing.  From this vantage point, two side-by-side Dacor ovens, a trademark here at Design Galleria, will be topped with a mirrored hutch making this piece feel more like furniture rather than a standard oven cabinet.  We are going to narrow the breakfast room opening by 6” and move some light switches to allow us to make the walk-in pantry 19” deeper which will add a significant amount of storage.  The hood and rangetop will be in the same location as before due to venting restrictions but the sinks will be moved in front of the windows overlooking the front yard.

Now that we have a general layout that works, always function first, we can start selecting colors, materials and fixtures.  I like to fall in love with one item and work the other materials choices around it.  In this case, I flipped out over an enormous block of marble Magd Riad from Marmi Natural Stone found for me in rural Italy.  He knew I was looking for something very special and texted a picture to me late one night; I instantly knew I had to have it so he made arrangements to have it sliced and sent over.

I can’t wait to share with you what else I found to complement this amazing marble.

We had so much fun and received such great feedback and questions from last year’s blog about the journey to the completion of 2009 Atlanta Symphony Decorators’ Show House; we could not resist doing it again. This year the show house is back on more familiar ground in a historic Colonial-Revival style home in Tuxedo Park versus last year’s show house in the newly opened St. Regis. Last year we chronicled the design process of one of the modern kitchens we presented, while this year we will share our adventures of designing, renovating and installing this traditional kitchen. Clearly, there will be some similarities as we approach the design process the same way no matter what the project; but this year we had some unique challenges.

This particular home means something to me. I had just started as an intern at Design Galleria in 1993 when Cliff Wang and Kathy Gregorcyk were installing a new kitchen into this home. This house was the first job site I visited and the first kitchen installation I experienced. It made gutting the kitchen especially hard but also exhilarating and exciting to see what the new guard at Design Galleria could do in the same space 17 years later.

People really do not live today much differently than they did in 1993. The original kitchen was actually still in great shape and the layout of the kitchen would still be considered appropriate for a modern family. The first thing that dates a kitchen is the appliances. We could have simply exchanged the appliances, replaced the hood and backsplash and a faucet here and there and this could have worked…but what kind of challenge is that? We wanted to do more; let’s remember, this is a show house!

Pictures of the original kitchen

The original kitchen had a 36” wide refrigerator, 36” wide freezer, 48” wide range, a warming drawer, microwave, main sink, prep sink, one dishwasher, desk and a rather small walk-in pantry. The island layout really separated the kitchen from the keeping room which was intentional, so whoever was cooking was not disturbed by all the hustle and bustle. The refrigerator and freezer were placed symmetrically on each side of the range while a desk and shallow pantry backed up to the powder room and pantry concealing a dumbwaiter to the garage. The biggest challenge in this space is the ceiling height of 8’6” with existing 6” tall beams. We are going to have to pull some ceiling elevating tricks out of our hat to make this kitchen feel taller.

Original kitchen plan

Stay tuned next week for the changes we made to the plan.