Lakeside Kitchen on a Budget
Boca Raton, Florida
I love this kitchen. It looks expensive, but in fact it was created on a relatively small budget.
Here’s what the kitchen looked like before:
The client had on-going relationships with affordable and skilled contractors and carpenters who gave her discounted (repeat-customer) pricing on the project. And prior to starting the project she had spent months tracking down “scratch & dent” appliances, which saved her several thousand dollars.
She and her husband are both avid cooks, and they wanted a room where they could both work at once without hindering each other. They also wanted a kitchen that didn’t look like it was created on a budget. And one that was timeless but not boring.
She also had previously obtained several beautiful pieces of reclaimed wood, mostly pecky cypress, which we decided would become the focal point of the kitchen: the hood (which is edged in the pecky cypress), the skylight (which is lined in the pecky cypress), and the sliding barn door. We wanted to open the beautiful view to the lake, and to take down the dated peninsula cabinets between the kitchen and the dining area. Lastly, because the clients had purchased a regular-depth refrigerator (before they realized the design problem it would create) we needed to make certain this item did not stand out, either literally or figuratively. So we pulled the tall cabinets flanking the refrigerator forward to make the refrigerator appear to be counter-depth.
We put a bar sink and undercounter wine refrigerator on the island, but near the dining area so that accessing them would not get in the way of cooking activities.
Given all of the angles in the space (which create a sense of activity), we wanted to offset this with colors leaning in the calming direction. We took the colors of the pecky cypress as the starting point, found a countertop that coordinated with that wood and then found tiles that coordinated with the countertop and wood. Then we painted the cabinets in the colors of the tiles (off-white and taupe).
Beautiful, timeless, not-boring. And within budget.
