Rooms to Love: Classic Kitchen for Entertaining
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From the pages of
Renovation Style®

Dual Design Kitchens

Growing numbers of Americans are discovering the pure enjoyment and satisfaction of cooking, especially cooking for others. Here’s a kitchen designed for those who have a passion for good food and good times.


The first step to creating an entertaining kitchen was to knock down non-load-bearing walls. One spacious room can accommodate more people and more functions, says kitchen designer Janice Pattee, director of design services for KraftMaid Cabinetry. Larger windows and two sets of sliding glass doors were installed, filling the room with light and allowing for a comfortable traffic flow.

Pattee then turned her attention to creating several high-functioning food-preparation areas:

  • A center island serves as the central food-prep area, fitted with a deep sink and a polished-chrome gooseneck faucet, refrigerated vegetable drawers, and baskets to store root vegetables. One of the kitchen’s two fully integrated dishwashers fits under the island, but with its hidden control panel and cabinet front, it’s hard to spot. The other side of the island offers space for guests to sit and taste what’s cooking. The solid-surface countertops resemble polished concrete, finished with an ogee edge.
  • The cooking wall is anchored by a 48-inch professional range that is fitted into a 24-inch recess so it stands flush with standard cabinetry. It is flanked by drawers with storage for pans and utensils.
  • A clean-up station features an apron-front farmhouse sink, the second fully integrated dishwasher, storage cabinets for dishes and flatware, and a hanging plate rack.
  • Cold storage is on the opposite wall, where a refrigerator and freezer are neatly hidden behind cabinetry.
  • A meal-planning corner fits under a window with a desk fashioned from more cabinetry, including turned legs. Tucked up against the side of the refrigerator—no wasted space here!—is a vertical cabinet that serves as a message center, with storage for phone books.

    A dramatic arch separates the business side of the kitchen from the wet bar and entertaining areas. The cherry-veneered dining table with slipcovered side chairs is a perfect spot for formal or relaxed dining. A wet bar with an undercounter wine chiller is on one side of the space, a tile-adorned gas fireplace on the other.

    Defining the dining space, the tumbled Italian marble tile used throughout the room is arranged in a diamond pattern of three soft colors, mimicking an area rug.

    What further defines these areas—and pulls the room together—is the creative use of unfitted cabinetry and a variety of finishes, styles, and moldings. Pattee mixed three door styles and two woods: a simplified maple door in soft yellow and more formal raised-panel doors in both cherry and maple, finished with rich glazes. “This complex combination of finishes and designs gives a really neat look,” she says. “Designers are really paying attention to detail. For example, I used five different top-molding combinations in this kitchen.” Her choices: classic crown, dentil, ogee, egg-and-dart, and single-bead moldings.

    With all of the choices in cabinet faces, wood species, finishes, insets, and moldings, designers can create a customized kitchen using a manufacturer’s standard offerings. And cabinetmakers are making much more than cabinets. In this kitchen, the coffered ceiling, the crown valances, the carved corbels, the spindle legs that support the desk and flank the farmhouse-style sink, the mantelpieces, and the freestanding hutch next to the farmhouse sink are all part of the cabinet line.

    Designed to accommodate the best cooks—and their friends and families—this kitchen is a case study in functional beauty.

    Credits

    Text: Allison Engle

    Photography: Colleen Duffley

    Production: Robert Young

    Design: Janice Pattee, CKD

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