Davis Square Kitchen

Davis Square wasn’t quite the highly desirable place to live as it is now several years ago, when the clients of this home called me for a few new built-ins and furnishings. But when they reached out more recently for help with redoing their kitchen and Powder Room, they had firmly decided to stay in their home. The nearby Square by then was thriving and diverse, and featured great eateries and unique, local businesses.

Both husband and wife are avid cooks who frequently work in tandem preparing meals. They also have a large amount of cooking and baking ware, dishware, and cookbooks. So the challenge for this project was to work with a relatively small space and create good flow, especially by the sink area, and lots of lots of storage.

They also wanted to orient the kitchen more towards the backyard that had transformed into a lovely urban greenspace over the past few years.

We thought that incorporating a ceiling-height glass door to the deck, and locate it straight across from the Front Entrance would give the backyard the prominence it deserved, and viewable as soon one walks into the home. We placed the kitchen sink on that wall with a window above it featuring a glass shelf for growing herbs.

Not wanting to just line the walls with one style of upper and lower cabinets, and to avoid redundancy of materials, we inserted open shelves amidst both lower and upper cabinets. These we framed in walnut to match the lightening-shaped walnut pendant above the peninsula, as well as the counter stool bases.

For space saving, we created one wall of pantry cabinets that incorporated a coffee/appliance station as well as their wall oven and microwave. Across from that pantry wall, close to the Dining Room, and around the corner from the cooktop, we created a built-in bar to house all their barware.

The clients requested a geometric pattern for their backsplash, and eventually settled on the large deep blue ceramic triangles that set off the white and walnut cabinets perfectly.

Blessed with a couple of fun, funky art pieces to work with, we found homes for the large scale three dimensional matchbox we placed near their new built-in desk, and the massive green apple half found its home above a small sideboard in the adjacent Dining Room. The tiny Powder Room with a shared kitchen pantry wall, was made fun with an apple green graphic wallpaper and a tiny custom wall hung vanity and sink.