Photo by Carl Socolow
A unique Kohler farmhouse sink set in soapstone countertops offers a focal point to the kitchen's prep area.
Designer: John Petrie Mother Hubbard's Custom Cabinetry, Mechanicsburg
Mural, Mural on the Wall
Kitchen design demands precision planning, but improvisational skills also come in handy.
Take the case of the reappearing baker. Artist James Maynard Williamson hand-built this home in 1927, and his designs are painted throughout the house.
The kitchen got its first makeover in the post-war era, so the dated space needed an upgrade. Designer John Petrie had a small space to work with, so he slated one blank wall for storage. But workers tearing down that wall discovered a long-lost mural of a baker pulling a pie fresh from the oven, painted directly on cinderblock. A wooden arch overhead proclaimed, “face powder may get him but baking powder will hold him.”
It meant sacrificing some storage, but Williamson’s work had to stay.
“The homeowner was very excited,” Petrie recalls. “She called me when they found it. We met at the house to determine how to maintain it and incorporate it into the design.”
Petrie converted the cabinetry planned for that wall into a footed peninsula with drawers, prep sink, and wine rack.
The project presented several unique challenges for Petrie, of Mother Hubbard’s Custom Cabinetry, Mechanicsburg (www.mhcc.com). The homeowner left many details to Petrie’s discretion, but she also directed that the focal point be the blue, cast iron Aga cooker.
Aga cookers are Canadian-made, with ovens that are always on at different temperatures. They’re shipped in parts that a technician pieces together onsite. That process prevented Petrie from getting final dimensions that would allow him to build the surrounding cabinets, making design finalization a challenge.
“Holy smokes,” he recalls thinking.
The oven and cabinets were installed without a hitch, and the kitchen gained badly needed extra dimensions through reconfiguration of the existing space. In Petrie’s plan, a bathroom added years before was demolished, and “a very clever general contractor” stole a closet behind the kitchen, straightened the angled basement stairs, and voila—a few precious square feet materialized.
“That really opened up the space, but we still had three doors and a large window,” Petrie says. “We weren’t able to open the space to the great room, but the client didn’t want that. A home in 1927, the kitchen wasn’t open to the house. It was a room you cooked in. You’d have people bringing you blocks of ice, so they didn’t want to see a refrigerator.”
The prep sink was another accommodation for the kitchen’s small space. The main sink was a real find—a Kohler farmhouse sink with integrated backsplash and painted in blues with vegetable and fruit motifs. But between the main sink and the cooker is a back door to the garden, frequently used by residents and guests. To prevent collisions, Petrie put a small prep sink in the island, easily accessed by the cook but away from foot traffic.
Petrie designed the cabinets, custom-built by Mother Hubbard, in two contrasting finishes to add both depth and lightness, and to integrate the kitchen with the rest of the home. Oak base cabinets are stained in espresso, and upper cabinets are maple, finished in a butter cream color with mocha glaze. Cabinets extend to the ceiling, adding an illusion of height to the “not overly tall” eight-foot-high room. Vertical beadboard inserts also lengthened the space and “provided more details in the cabinetry for the glaze to be captured and highlighted,” Petrie notes.
A toe-space stepstool helps the homeowner access items on the upper shelves and the cookbooks showcased in shelves built around the family-room door (and look closely at the photo to see more Williamson paintings inside the doorway).
Soapstone countertops bridge the cabinetry’s two tones. Soapstone was the ideal choice here for its legacy feel—it’s a good fit for older homes, Petrie notes—and for its bluish-gray undertones.
“Soapstone is a wonderful product,” Petrie says. “You treat it with a mineral oil to seal, and it becomes a nonporous countertop. It gives you that hard surface, but it’s not a real shiny surface.”
Petrie also replaced the wood windowsill over the sink with soapstone, creating “a neat surface to put flowers and herbs on.”
The homeowner wanted to complete the kitchen’s period feel by hiding the refrigerator and dishwasher. Petrie covered them in the same two-tone cabinetry, so the refrigerator looks like a butter cream cabinet over two espresso drawers.
Other period-style details include the new pine flooring and white subway tiles along two walls.
Working on this kitchen with a homeowner who gave Petrie room to innovate was “a joy.” In the end, Petrie feels he designed a kitchen for the ages – one that “feels like a part of the original house,” with its unique features preserved for future generations.
Resources
Design: Mother Hubbard’s Custom Cabinetry, Mechanicsburg, 717-697-0949; www.mhcustom.com. Cabinets: Custom design by Mother Hubbard's Custom Cabinetry. Base: White oak with espresso stain. Wall: Maple wood, butter cream with mocha glaze. Cabinet hardware: Top Knobs; www.topknobsusa.com. Cooker: Aga; www.aga-ranges.com. Sink: Kohler apron-front, Journey Design on Gilford Wall-Mount Kitchen Sink; www.kohler.com. Hood: Custom-made mantel hood, finished in butter cream with mocha glaze. Hand-carved Enkeboll corbels; www.enkeboll.com. Tile: Epro Tile; www.eprotile.com
Designer: Sandra Steiner-Houck Steiner-Houck Design Build, Columbia
The Simple Life
Simplicity takes skill. When the owner of this 1960s contemporary home sought an Asian contemporary bath with a spa-like feel, designer Sandra L. Steiner-Houck responded with a balance of tones and textures.
The result imparts both serenity and interest.
“It turned out to be a beautiful space,” says Steiner-Houck, of the design-build firm Steiner & Houck, Columbia (www.steinerandhouckinc.com).
The bathroom was remodeled as a part of a project renovating the whole master bedroom wing. The original bath space was actually a full bath and adjoining powder room, and the homeowners asked for one new bathroom to serve both the master bedroom and, for occasional guests, the guest room.
“This was the powder room, so if the guests need to use the bathroom, this is their powder room,” says Steiner-Houck.
The remodel preserved skylights from each of the original baths, creating natural light in the windowless room. The need for a natural feel, Asian contemporary design, and spa-like serenity guided the entire project.
“I didn’t draw inspiration from any specific spa, but this is the tranquility you find, the simplicity, the clean lines, the natural material,” Steiner-Houck says.
This spa-like bath is a self-contained escape that’s thematically consistent with the Asian-inspired home, down to the refinished shoji screen separating the bath from the master bedroom. The vanity and makeup counter in granite and Wenge—a deep brown, Asian, horizontally grained wood—both float over the floor, letting the space flow without interruption to the eye. Eighteen-inch limestone floor tiles with machine-cut edges create less grout to look at—or clean. The frameless glass shower stall opens the view into a wall done in the same tiles as the floor.
The frameless shower glass also offers a peek at a delightful feature of this bath—a riverstone shower floor that provides a little massage for the feet.
“We tried to pull in a lot of natural materials," says Steiner-Houck. "The scale of the riverstone works well to create a nonslip floor, but the shape of it is very therapeutic. ”
Steiner-Houck used texture to magnify the room’s overall interest and prevent a washout of creams, whites and beiges. “The granites are polished and shiny, and you get a different, subtle riverstone feel with the shower floor. The limestone tiles have a matte finish, and up along the tub you have some rough texture.” More texture comes from a wall covering with the feel of grass paper, and the dark wood of shelves and cabinets adds more contrast.
An air bubble tub with chromatherapy lights underscores the spa theme and the use of this room as an escape from the everyday. A unique tub filler—“very simple and natural”—fits flush against the wall and sounds like a waterfall as it spouts water in a clean arc.
Steiner-Houck covered the tub wall with rough limestone pieced in mosaic tiles. The wall projects in the center to “accentuate the area” and create two small alcoves for greenery.
Steiner-Houck recognizes that spa-like serenity doesn’t come only from the look of the bath, but also from its functionality. That’s why her firm builds everything it designs.
“It all ties together, and it’s engineered well, too,” she says. “That’s the point of design-build. We can do a great design, but if it doesn’t get executed properly, it can fall short and not be effective. A lot of the things we’re designing, even though you see clean lines, there’s a lot that goes into engineering that application. It might look simple, very natural, but if you don’t engineer it properly, it may not end up like that in the end.”
This bath achieved what many of today’s bathrooms are meant to—offer a restorative space, says Steiner-Houck.
“With our hectic lifestyles, people want bathrooms to feel like places where they can escape to. A lot of people are putting in different sprays and features. They didn’t do that in this bathroom, but they found amenities and created that spa, that place where they can hide away at the end of the day and relax.”
Resources
Design and construction: Steiner & Houck, Inc., Columbia, 717-684-5666; www.steinerandhouckinc.com.
Lavatory & faucet: Kohler; www.kohler.com.
Tub: Bain Ultra; www.bainultra.com. Kohler tub filler; www.kohler.com.
Hand shower and shower system: Kohler; www.kohler.com
Toilet: Kohler, with Cachet quiet-close seat; www.kohler.com.
Stone and tile: All stone and tile supplied by Natural Stoneworks, Lancaster; www.naturalstoneworks.com. Floor, shower walls, tub deck and riser, Noce Travertine. Tub walls, Bali collection, Walker Zanger. Shower floor, Zen Garden Maluku, Walker Zanger; www.walkerzanger.com.
Cabinetry: Wenge wood, built by Premier Custom-Built, New Holland, 717-354-3059; www.premiercb.com.
Countertops: Viara granite.
Stories by M. Diane McCormick