Interior Design Studio Kitchen
Coming up to our second anniversary in the Kawarthas, we’re excited to share our design space! Over the winter we took some space from our Colborne Street Gallery and made it specifically for Home by Tim + Chris. Along with our friends at Lucvaa kitchens who produced our cabinetry design and Fisher Paykel appliances who were generous in providing the appliances, we put in place a dream showcase kitchen!
Like many of our design projects with clients, we approached this one from the ground up. We produced a variety of 3D layouts to try and figure out where best to put the kitchen and then how best to lay it out. It’s nice to have blank space, but sometimes some restrictions make the job a little easier! Finally with a layout in hand, we put together some sample boards for us to mull over and started picking some fun accessories to complete the kitchen.
One of the fun things about doing a ‘demo’ kitchen is that you get to push some boundaries. In this kitchen I specifically wanted to push clients color boundaries and use my favorite color, Farrow and Ball’s Green Smoke. We wanted to make the kitchen feel like it had been in the space for some time, the building was built in the early 1900’s and we thought it fun to play on some traditional elements. The Green Smoke shaker cabinetry was a perfect fit for the job.
Playing to the old feeling was fun, but we also wanted to have the space feel like it fit in a modern home at the same time. Along with our cabinet maker Lucvaa kitchens, we designed a new drawer front out of walnut - a contemporary take on a traditional shaker style. We’ve since named it the Colborne and it is now a go to design!
The soft solid brass hardware from Myoh was a great contrast to both the Green Smoke color and the walnut drawer faces. Myoh makes some great hardware at varying price points and we couldn’t believe the reasonable cost for our Beaulieu pulls and Sula knobs with square backplates. The bridge faucet with its lovely knurled handles from Brizo helped provide some character to the countertops. We can’t believe how solid the matching sprayer feels, we’d swear it weighs a couple pounds! We used a Blanco silgranit sink to play off the brushed brass feel and are surprised at how clean it stays - we always thought a black sink would be hard to keep clean.
We had always wanted to use the biggest slab of Cambria quartz we could on an island and a jumbo slab in Swanbridge at 132” was set as the island counter size (the countertop could also be 65” wide, but we really only had 40” until we got in the way of a hallway). Cambria also did the backsplash and plate shelf. We really wanted the countertop to wrap up to the bottom of the cabinets, we always love the seamlessness of this and the way that it reflects light. A plate shelf was installed to hold some small art, we found the plate rail at a small supplier in England who could come close to the patina of the handles and faucet.
Over the island we used one of our go to lighting suppliers, Hudson Valley Lighting and installed 2 Malden, multi-light chandeliers with oversized, pleated shades. Their look soft and warm, a contemporary take on a traditional fixture. They provide so much diffused light and are a luxury in the kitchen!
When it came to the stools, we chose to work with EQ3. EQ3 is a go to Canadian furniture supplier for us and they really upped their stool game with this design. What you can’t see is that working from the island everyday requires a bit more than a regular stool to be comfortable and EQ3 also provided us with some endlessly adjustable Herman Miller Aeron counter stools to make sure we could make it through a whole day!
With some great additions to the kitchen from Richelieu, a Lemans pull out corner cabinet, a pull out garbage divider, a tip out tray for cloths under the sink, some great cutlery dividers and a cabinet of tray dividers to keep our many samples in, our kitchen really works for us - our goal with every client.
But in the end Miele made our days so much brighter with their OneTouch for two countertop coffee maker. It even warms our cups for us!
We hope you enjoy the photos and renderings of the kitchen as much as we do the final product and can’t wait for you to poke your head in and see what’s going on!
Bonus picture: Our loyal assistant, Hudson, during office hours at the gallery.
