Kitchen

Kitchen Confidential Kiely and architect Maxim Laroussi designed the kitchen unit. “I originally didn’t want an island, but I liked what we did because it feels like a piece of furniture. It’s cozy to cook around,” Kiely says. Panels of orange and olive Formica accent the 1950s-inspired piece, which houses a cooktop by Smeg. A checkerboard of closed cabinets and open shelves offers storage against the far wall for Kiely’s collection of dishes, knickknacks, cookbooks, and small appliances, like the KitchenAid stand mixer and radio by Vita Audio. The floor is green Marmoleum, selected because it feels warm underfoot. Kiely’s own Stem dish towels and ceramic storage jars add more lively color to the room.

Sasha samples berries at the island while Wes, perched on the counter next to Deborah, clutches the whipped cream—similar in color to the backsplash, made of traditional Moroccan tiles and available through Emory & Cie.

The designers fabricated everything in the house, down to the quarter-sawn pine and macrocarpa-wood kitchen cabinetry and concrete floor. “Physically the most challenging part of the build was wrestling an incredibly slippery concrete pump up the muddy driveway in the rain!” says designer Ben Mitchell-Anyon. The enamel pendant light is vintage. Photo by: Paul McCredie

Brisbane-based studio Owen and Vokes and Peters designed a modern kitchen addition for a traditional Queensland-style timber house. Glossy Vogue Ghiaccio kitchen tiles set off custom cabinetry built by Cooroy Joinery & Woodworks using American oak veneer and Centor doors. The dishwasher is by AEG.

A family enlists Brooklyn design-build firm MADE to renovate a brownstone using surplus and salvaged materials for a budget-conscious patina. In the kitchen, the island and cabinets, fashioned from remilled Douglas-fir beams salvaged from upstate New York, sport inexpensive drawers from Ikea.

The open dining area and kitchen of a midcentury renovation in Austin shows the existing terrazzo flooring, the plaster ceiling, and the kitchen's tile backsplash—Fireclay Debris series in Daffodil—working in harmony. Floating shelves in the kitchen window and a stainless-steel countertop surrounding the kitchen's burners rest just beneath the backsplash. A Boca Raton Blue upper cabinet and Nelson pendants add interest and dimension to the kitchen's warm combination of wood, yellow and blue. Vintage chairs, seated at the kitchen island and in the front right corner at the dining table, complete the design scheme.

Shane Michael Pavonetti, an Austin-based architect and contractor, and his wife, Holly, built their eco-friendly home on a lean budget of $175,000. The cedar siding used on the exterior reappears throughout the house. Keen on recycling the wood, the couple added shelving to their kitchen as well.

Handcrafted green cement tile floors are used in the kitchen and in many living spaces in the home. Honed granite counters, Tzalam wood cabinets, and GE Profile appliances complete the airy space.

By eliminating walls and incorporating a series of interior gardens, architect José Roberto Paredes creates an eclectic and inspired El Salvador beach house. In the kitchen, rough-hewn materials like a eucalyptus-log-and-thatch roof offset the monolithic concrete island and glossy subway tile backsplash. Claudia & Harry Washington built the vivid wooden sliding walls, which are inspired by the palm leaves that change color and create diagonal patterns in trees near the house. The bar stools were a street market discovery.

In the kitchen, the architects contrasted the oak floor, bamboo cabinetry, and birch walls and ceiling with what architect Jonathan Knowles calls “a family of grays”: granite floor tiles, limestone countertops, and the steel stairway. The birch wall behind Yvette is actually the sliding door to the pantry closet.

"In the kitchen, we changed the layout," Davison says. "It was a galley kitchen, extending lengthways into the room. We spun it back along the back wall. The tiles are Moroccan concrete tiles that came from a supplier here in Manhattan. The idea was to inject some color and playfulness into the space with the blue cabinetry." Photo by Alan Gastelum.

Container Store finds, like galvanized-steel shelving in the kitchen, maximize storage.

For the kitchen, master bath, and kids’ bathroom, the designers chose three different hues of Savoy stacked mosaic tile from Portland-based manufacturer Ann Sacks. Tractor barstools by BassamFellows pull up to a PentalQuartz countertop. The gas cooktop, oven, and dishwasher are by Miele.

Just because your kitchen is on the smaller side doesn’t mean you can’t make it as efficient and effective as possible.

A Mirror Ball pendant by Tom Dixon hovers over the kitchen counter.

"Maintaining sight lines to the outdoors and the adjacent den, we introduced a connectivity that transforms the kitchen into the center of family life,