Cooking Up Love in My Dream Kitchen

We’ve all been to that party—more than a few parties—where everyone ends up hanging out in the kitchen, no matter how many other rooms there are. I’m not sure if there is any research on the tradition, but I believe it is because the kitchen is the heart of the home.

We moved into our new house in early 2019 and spent much of last year making it a home. As a designer, I was excited to create my dream kitchen. I knew I wanted to have a larger and more functional kitchen than the place had when we purchased it. Even before our daughter was born, my husband and I spent lots of time in the kitchen. When Eleanor was a baby starting to eat solid foods she would sit in a little chair on the counters in our old apartment. There she took the first tastes of the foods she has come to love (and a few she wasn’t so thrilled with). She also sat in her little chair watching me cook and on the table downing smoothies in the morning.

We make most of our meals at home and we do lots of family cooking projects with Eleanor. She loves making smoothies and baking with us. Her favorites are donuts on the weekends and cookies or brownies during the week. A great kitchen—for cooking up memories and meals with my loves—was a top priority for me.

Before: The original kitchen in our home. Today this 9’x12’ space is our family room.

We did the kitchen renovation before moving in. The original kitchen was 9’x12’ (that space is now our family room) and the new one is about 12’x16’—almost double in size and tripled in functionality. Designing this kitchen presented the unique challenge of being my own client. As a designer, I knew everything we wanted and needed. At the same time, I also knew all of the options available on the market. Admittedly, I had a hard time narrowing things down.

Whenever we are working with a client to plan a kitchen I ask questions about how they use the current space. I want to know all about their routine from whether they drink coffee everyday and need a space for everything to be centered and streamlined, to what and how they like to cook. I ask if they love to bake. I also ask if they like to experiment with new recipes requiring all kinds of gadgets and small kitchen appliances and a large sink to hold the mess. Identifying the needs, as well as the wants, is absolutely necessary for us to design a kitchen that is beautiful, works for the client, and has a place for all the things they need.

Adhering to my principles for delivering great customer service and design for others, I asked the same questions of myself and my husband. I played with three different layouts and ultimately we decided to go with my initial instincts for the space. We are very happy with the end result.

Our kitchen has a series of zones that work for us. We have the baking zone which houses the big mixer, different cake pans, sprinkles, extracts, and other baking project essentials. The coffee zone has all of our mugs, beans, teas within reach of the coffee maker. The standard meal zone has all of the plates, silverware, cloth napkins, etc. right below the food storage cabinet all next to the range.

With function and flow taken care of, “feel” was next on my list. We replaced the old window with the largest window we could fit, and it floods the room with sunlight. It gives the room the most beautiful light, bright feel you can imagine. I fell in love with the paint swatch for Benjamin Moore Salamander the minute I saw it and knew it would be perfect for our kitchen. It’s playful, a little bold, but dark enough to feel neutral, and the green tone plays well with the exposed brick in the space. The exposed brick, the white oak floors and the marble all enrich the room and help tie in the age of the house with the modern workability of the kitchen.

We have plans to—one day—add a banquet dining nook in the window corner and build a pantry over the coffee station with the original pantry doors from the previous kitchen. Homes, like families, grow and change over time.

Our kitchen is one of my all time favorite rooms, and now that we have another baby on the way (yep, we have a bun in the oven-arriving Summer 2020) I’m really looking forward to creating more memories and sharing more about our home and growing family in future posts.