KitchenLab

Current state of the kitchen - though still in flux.

So finally, to our favorite room in the house! The kitchen is truly where we live – it’s right off our home office, separate by an 8 ft cased opening with barn doors that are always open. Most days our kitchen table is covered in samples and paperwork, or doubles as a second desk or conference table – we cleaned up  a bit for the pictures!

You might recognize the Saarinen table – it’s been in just about every room in our house so far. Currently it’s in the kitchen until Nick builds an island. Yes, that’s right, he won our debate from months ago. Island or table? We tried the table for a few months but something about it just wasn’t right for the way we live. We scored this narrow, 27″ table below at a Michigan antique store and painted it in Farrow and Ball Downpipe – paired with some Eames Eiffel chairs to tone down the rustic look. So after much deliberation, we bit the bullet and decided to sell the table and chairs. Ironically, a client of mine had been struggling for months to find a table and chairs that worked for her open concept kitchen/family room – so we tried this one out and it worked perfectly!

Our kitchen a few weeks ago with the farm table that's now found a better home. The antique glass front cabinet is both our food pantry and our dish cabinet.

From the first picture to the second – we made a few changes. The runner, which still isn’t perfect, but we own it so it’s staying for now. I’m hoping to do a brighter, more graphic Kilim at some point. The back wall we painted Benjamin Moore’s Chelsea Gray, though we toyed with some dark navy blues – as you can see from the swatches in the picture above. We also toyed with wallpaper for that back wall, and still  might do that some day, but for now, this is what’s staying.  And finally, little things like a clock and a pot rack. I just can’t seem to live in a kitchen without a pot rack – it seemed so naked until we got that on the wall!

See ma, no wall cabinets! Our open shelves house everything from wine and cookbooks to the microwave.

My most treasured possession in the kitchen is the chandelier – I had squandered the opportunity to buy it when I first saw it in a Columbus, Ohio antique store while visiting my family for Thanksgiving. We had tried out a crystal chandelier in the interim, but it just didn’t work…So when my sister texted me a picture of the same vintage brass chandelier that showed up in the same store, I called them immediately bought it over the phone, sight-unseen! I should have taken my own advice, the advice I give clients constantly….if you see something vintage that you love, and just can’t get out of your head, buy it or it will be gone, even if you’re not sure where it will go. If you don’t find a home for it you can always re-sell it.

It's hard to remember this far back to what the kitchen looked like when the floor was just going down.

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