Kitchen Conundrum: More Inspiration, Neighborhood Edition

Along with the Internet, open houses in our neighborhood have been another source of ideas for our future kitchen. Many houses near us have very similar floor plans to ours, and they have been reworked in a variety of ways. Here are two recently-for-sale kitchens within a couple of blocks of us:

This kitchen is very pretty. I love a lot about it: the two-tone cabinets, school house light, and wood countertops are great. It manages to have a light and airy feeling in a small footprint and an individuality that isn't common in a lot of the remodeled kitchens I've seen around here.



I'm not sure very many of these solutions are practical for us (we'll be leaving the doors on our cabinets and keeping our walls where they are; it's safer that way when you have avian flock, er, family members). However, notice what these folks did with their cabinets/countertop behind the door, where their microwave sits:

A narrow continuation of the counter to provide more space yet still let the door open! We've got a space just like that; it currently houses a kitchen cart, but this makes me think we could do an actual cabinet there.

Another nearby kitchen:

This one is not quite as lovely or well lit. However, it has another clever use of a difficult space that we can translate for our kitchen. See the shallow cabinets and countertop on the right wall, beyond the microwave and range? We've got a space just like that. It currently houses an antique pie safe, but I am thinking we could add lots of cabinetry, and a bit of work space, there as well.

Kitchen Conundrum: More Inspiration

In my last post, I included some aspirational images of white kitchens. Here are some more attainable examples, mostly pulled from Apartment Therapy, mostly created and lived in by real people.










(This last one is especially informative. It's the NYC apartment kitchen of Judith Jones, a senior editor at Knopf and Julia Child's editor for Mastering the Art of French Cooking.)

Kitchen Conundrum: Tyranny of the Big White

Ever since we bought our new, bright white refrigerator last spring, we've been thinking of how to rework our kitchen. Over and over again, the answer seems to be: white!

I've read that the vogue for big white kitchens may have been sparked by the 2003 movie Something's Gotta Give. Behold its starring kitchen:



I've also read that cabinet maker and kitchen designer Christopher Peacock is responsible for the white kitchen craze. Here he is in his "scullery kitchen." I never knew sculleries could look so good! This one is clearly for the upstairs crowd...wonder what the downstairs scullery is like?



But is a white kitchen a matter of fashion or lasting style? In June I visited the John F. Kennedy Historic Site in Brookline, MA. And what did I find there in the circa-1917 home? Rose Kennedy had a white kitchen!



I think white must go beyond style into function. White is easy to keep clean (because you can see the dirt); it goes with everything; it reflects light, making small spaces seem larger; and white appliances don't cost extra (unlike stainless steel). Even most of my modest apartment kitchens have been mostly white. It's kind of a default choice for a reason; kitchens are meant to work hard and last a long time, so it makes sense to choose something that looked as good in 1917 as it did in 2003 (and hopefully as it will in 2017).


(This is the kitchen from the tiny little 1920's bungalow we lived in in LA. Kind of a mess here, but it worked incredibly well despite non-fancy appliances and modest materials.)