Keeping Things Cozy
Rich colors warm up these kitchens
by: Laurie Higgins
South Orleans project
Design:
Kitchen & Bath Designs Unlimited
Builder:
IBI Construction Company
Professional Photography:
Dan Cutrona
South Plymouth project
Design/Build: Dreamscapes of Cape Cod
Professional Photography: Jennifer Eldredge Stello
North Eastham project
Design/Build: Cape Associates
Professional Photography: Courtesy of Mark Kinnane
These three homeowners went with either finished wood or cabinetry painted in a deep, saturated color to project a cozy feeling. But the similarities stopped there. One woman created an antique feel for her fairly new house. A South Plymouth couple went with a distinctly European style when deciding on the details for their kitchen renovation and still another looked to nearby Nantucket for inspiration.
An Antique Reproduction
The old adage that the kitchen is the heart of the home is never truer than when friends and family gather. One South Orleans homeowner and avid cook, who loves to entertain, kept that in mind when she recently renovated her kitchen.
“Everybody knows when you have a party nobody leaves the kitchen and my kitchen was so small that they were all in the middle of my workspace,” she says, admitting she used to light a fire in the living room just to lure guests out of her kitchen.
Now her guests can relax comfortably in upholstered chairs by the new brick cooking fireplace that was part of the renovation to transform the former 13- by 13-foot galley kitchen into an 18 by 22 foot great room.
The homeowner wanted the addition to look like it had always been part of the 1980 reproduction house. Her vision was to create an eclectic one of a kind kitchen, and the cookie cutter cabinetry she saw in a lot of the showrooms she visited just didn’t appeal to her sensibilities.
“I went to all kinds of kitchen places and they all looked too manufactured to me,” she explains. “They didn’t go with the house. My husband and I always said our house reminded us of an old tavern and I needed a cabinet that made me feel that way.”
While looking at appliances at the Clarke Showroom in Hopkinton, she found exactly what she was looking for with pine cabinets made by Draper DBS Cabinetry. That discovery led her to Kitchen & Bath Designs Unlimited in Osterville, the only on-Cape dealer of the DBS cabinet line, and designer Eric Leckstrom, vice president of the company his father started 24 years ago.
“The whole plan was to keep it very old world looking and I think we pulled it off pretty well,” Leckstrom says.
The perimeter cabinets are all made by DBS with details such as hand carving, distressing and wooden latches. Because the homeowner wanted to maximize the views of Arey’s Pond with plenty of windows, top cupboards are minimal, something made possible by a large pre-existing pantry on the first level of the home.
To avoid that perfectly matched look, the homeowner bought a Ritter reproduction antique cupboard to house all of her dishes and chose a black antiqued milk paint center island made by QualityCabinets.
Countertops are Jet Mist Honed granite with white veins that replicate the look of soapstone, but are more durable. To counteract the coldness of the granite, the homeowner had radiant heat installed under the pine floors. They also chose a distressed cherry top for the island, rather than granite because they wanted it to be more like sitting at a table than sitting at a counter.
Three restored antique pendant lamps from Continuum in Orleans create a softer glow than recessed lighting and tin punched doors on the vegetable bins add to the antique appearance.
For the avid cooks, a four-foot Wolf rangetop with a 54-inch Wolf hood, with built in heat lamps and a warming shelf, makes cooking a breeze and the oversized sink is deep enough to hold a clam basket.
“I love to cook and we love to entertain and it just works for us,” the homeowner says.
A kitchen that flows with
the rest of the house
For Janet and Victor Coletti, a new kitchen was part of a full home remodel on the 1950’s era ranch they bought on Cape Cod Bay in Eastham in 2002. The new house was designed by architect Joyce Cuming at Architects Studio Ltd in South Wellfleet and built by Cape Associates in North Eastham.
“We gutted it and remodeled it,” says Mark Kinnane, vice president of construction at Cape Associates, a full service building company that has been in business for 37 years.
Like Diane, Janet was inspired by a kitchen she saw in a magazine featuring a home on Nantucket with Crown Point Cabinetry. “I loved it and I said, ‘This is what I want for my cabinets.’”
The cabinets are painted “Nantucket Blue” in a flat finish for a country look with satin nickel D-pull handles. The color was perfect for Janet’s color scheme of blue, yellow and red, and she credits architect Joyce Cuming with helping her pull it all together.
“I had a vision, but when Joy came with the plans it was 100 times more than I thought it would be,” Janet says.
The warm butter yellow walls perfectly match the Subway tile backsplash. The ceiling is painted a paler shade of the same yellow. Throughout the house all the floors, trim and built-in cabinets are light maple for a uniform look and the three colors are mirrored from room to room.
One of the best features of the kitchen is that it is open and accessible to the rest of the house, especially the adjoining family room with dining wing where the yellow walls continue and a red and blue sofa and red bowl on the dining room table continue the color scheme.
Janet picked out the appliances herself, beginning with the Wolf rangetop with red knobs and a built in pot filler above. The dual convection ovens and warming drawer are stainless from the GE Monogram Collection, as is the refrigerator with built in panels to blend seamlessly with the cabinetry.
Granite countertops extend to include a raised breakfast bar on the far end of the kitchen where a bar sink allows for ease in serving cocktails and a killer view of Cape Cod Bay while you’re mixing them. “In the summertime I can watch the sunset going down on the bay. I love it,” Janet says.
An Unintentional Remodel
Fred and Diane Horan of South Plymouth didn’t plan to remodel their eight-year-old kitchen until a flood last year ruined their entire first floor and basement. Rather than just replace their old kitchen, they decided to use the insurance money to upgrade to a new dream kitchen.
Diane spent a lot of time looking at magazines and scouring the internet until she found a photo of the exact kitchen she wanted. “The picture was my inspiration to say I want a European look kitchen,” she explains.
It also gave Mike Martin, owner of Designscapes of Cape Cod in Sandwich, a great starting point to discern his client’s taste. Diane found the perfect cabinets right on Designscapes showroom floor.
Her old cabinets were cherry, so she knew she didn’t want anything with a red tone. She also rejected the idea of white cabinetry. “We have so much white woodwork and it’s pretty, but it just wasn’t the look I wanted,” she said.
The cabinetry, including an ornate wooden hood over the rangetop, is so beautiful it becomes the focal point of the room. Made by Sticks and Stones Manufacturing in New Brunswick, the custom stained birch cabinets have a furniture base detail around the bottom. Woodcarving designs by Art for Everyday Inc. add the perfect finishing touch.
“It looks more like furniture than cabinets,” Diane says. “The stove front looks like a finely wrought piece of furniture.”
Martin took advantage of the Horan’s nine foot high ceilings, and staggered the heights and depths of the cabinets to create a three-dimensional look that is much more interesting than flush cabinets.
Aside from the cabinetry, Diane’s other favorite feature is the “Golden Beach” granite countertops. She used the rich colors in the granite as inspiration for the rest of the kitchen, with matching “Jerusalem Gold” backsplash tiles from Jeffrey Court tiles and accents of Susan Jablon’s 1-inch mosaic glass tiles in a shade reminiscent of root beer.
For appliances, the Horans decided to go with all black to match the speckles in the granite. “I know stainless steel is the big thing,” Diane says. “My feeling is a lot of times the stainless steel is the feature in the kitchen. The black blends in and it compliments it, but they are not the main feature in the kitchen.”
The Horans are thrilled with their new kitchen. “It is beyond what I thought it was going to be. Beyond,” Diane says. “The newness and awe factor has not worn off yet.”
Three families, three kitchens, all with cabinets done in dark hues and yet they could not be more different. Each of these homeowners took a classic overall look and totally made it their own with distinctive choices in appliances and fixtures. It’s the little things that make these kitchens ‘cook’.
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