Interior Design: Kitchen in Focus

Emily (our interior designer) has been great to become acquainted with, and also a wonderful help in starting to decide on some particulars.  She's been very good at paying attention to our preferences and giving us some interesting options, truly making all these decisions much easier.

We've moved from initial presentations to creating our own palette.  If you look back at the design boards, I'd say we're moving in the direction of the 2nd board (more period specific) while adding more bold colors and modern touches.  We want to be true to the architecture of the house, implementing many design ideas of the time, such as modern innovations and bridging the gap between inside and outside. This phase of design is where we pick out some of the big things that will set the tone for the house: colors and materials for flooring, cabinets, and walls.

We've been to Fixtures Living a couple of times and had a marvelous time looking at all the latest kitchen appliances and bath fixtures.  Chris has fallen for the La Cornue range, (no wonder,) especially after getting the chance for some hands-on time.  (So thankful to Emily and Alyson@Fixtures Living for setting this up for us!)  We have the majority of our appliances figured out (Miele fridge and dishwashers, Wolf oven) with some specifics waiting for us to finalize our kitchen layout.

 

Because our house is split-level, (the kitchen is a half-level step up from the living room it adjoins,) and because we have some traffic issues to consider, we are throwing around a couple of different layout ideas.  It is a long space, making it a bit tricky, but Emily is helping us puzzle it out.  We are currently exploring her idea (see #2 below) to keep traffic out of the cooking area while still encouraging visiting and entertaining.  I've drawn a rough sketch of the layout to help visualize the area.

We also went to West Hollywood to visit the Pacific Design Center to look at cabinet options at Cooper Pacific.  There are so many options that it is really quite inspiring.  The trouble will be narrowing down our preferences!  At this point, we know that we want to mix up our surfaces a bit (different cabinets on lower/upper, main/island etc.) keeping a medium light tone on the floors and counters, and something medium dark for the cabinets.  The cabinets we'd like to keep in a natural feel, fairly simple to let the range command attention.

That's the status of the kitchen design at this point.  We're also currently working on flooring materials and trying to pin down the design for our subterranean addition.  Hopefully I'll get around to posting an update on that soon.