The sketch (right) shows how the original kitchen looked. The cabinet in the center is the water heater for the whole house. The basic cabinets remain, but I created new cabinet doors and removed the waterheater cabinet and replaced it with a custom built free-standing storage cabinet.
The kitchen is the first room one sees when entering the house, a bad design feature hard to remedy, so our decision was to make the kitchen as visually interesting as possible.
Below: View of kitchen from main entrance hall. The archway was designed and built for the door opening. A painting was placed above the kitchen exit at the other end of the room. From this view, the dining room can be seen beyond the kitchen. On the left, a screen was made to conceal the side of the refrigerator.
The refrigerator doors are covered with custom made copper panels held in place with cherrywood molding. The designs on the regrigerator and cabinet doors were inspired by Italian Ricco Deruta designs found on popular ceramics.
In a small kitchen like this, modern appliances tend to dominate and spoil the room's aesthetics. Using a certain on one side, a small screen on the other, and the copper panels, the large white refrigerator becomes integrated into the otherall style of the room.
The counter top is made from wood--Mushka's idea. It took some persuading, but I admit the idea worked well. I used Douglas Fir with a small amount of Oak for the outer edge. It is stained and finished with Marine Varnish. As much as possible, I have used local, renewable materials.
I created the Indo-Persian inspired hall mirror from a standard size mirror and some pine wood. The entrance hall is very narrow, too narrow for comfortably greeting guests--another design flaw in the original house plan--but the mirror helps make the space feel larger. In fact, with the dining room wall mural reflecting in it, the small space looks to be a long view of a few miles.
