Kitchen

The new breakfast nook pairs a custom bench and table, both manufactured by Maneuverworks and surrounded by DWR Valencia chairs. Above are a Flos wall sconce and Schoolhouse Electric Luna pendant light

The relocated kitchen includes Villa Lagoon concrete floor tiles, Heath Ceramics island tiles, Schoolhouse Electric pendant lights and Design Within Reach Valencia stools.

A custom-built island anchors the kitchen-dining area, the most social area of the home.

The kitchen features integrated AEG appliances within black cabinetry, as well as a central island that also serves as a breakfast bar. Worktops are a contemporary laminate created from compressed paper and complement the industrial materials used throughout.

Set in the Oxfordshire village of Ambrosden, the two-story home is a 30-minute drive from Oxford and an hour train ride from London.

The renovation reconfigured the kitchen to include a peninsula, which has a secondary level for the owners' wheelchair-using daughter.

The renovation updated a pair of staircases—one to the basement, one to the upper level—from their steep, unsafe angle to one that is now up to code. In the dining room, the pendant by Hans-Agne Jakobsson is from Karoline’s family cabin in Germany.

One renovation request, homeowner Isaac Hase says, “was having a place to drop your shoes.” At the mudroom end of a run of kitchen cabinets, you’ll find another feature the couple asked for. “We wanted to have a dedicated, visible place for our little stash of cookbooks,” Karoline says.

Quartz countertops and two-by-eight-inch subway tile with tan grout (on the backsplash) complement the tone of the birch cabinetry and ash shelves in the kitchen.

It was important, says Kaplan, to define the kitchen area with the “heavy horizontal lid” that runs along the top of the windows. The custom stove hood echoes the lines of the original wainscot.

The main floor of the home features a living, dining, and kitchen area all in one place. "I think we went through 10 different teal paints before we landed on this one for the cabinets,

The cabinets are made from a super-matte laminate product called Fenix that’s ultra durable and fingerprint resistant.

Dark walnut floors are paired with vertical bleached walnut paneling.

The new kitchen is more colorful, with a long, thin island that's ergonomically better suited to preparing meels and bringing seating closer to the cooking.

After: The soaring new living and dining space benefits from an abundance of natural light from every side, and they spent a lot of time trying to find the best lighting for the kitchen. The final choice: long, narrow copper pendants from Denmark suspended by ultra thin wires to not disrupt the visual flow of the room.

Olive-green Fireclay tile creates a spa-like experience in the bathroom and fluctuates in tone throughout the day.

Two-toned closed cabinetry balanced with open shelves wraps the new kitchen. A metal and stone island acts as both the dining table and a prep counter, if needed.