Country kitchens

There's always been something tempting about a big country kitchen.
A space where history echoes along with the clammer of pots and pans. A room where family and friends can come together to relax and cook and eat. It sounds romantic. But, of course, a kitchen also tends to be the site of a home's most intense activity and traffic, and must therefore be built to function. As our country kitchens demonstrate, this is a room with a complex set of requirements: the right equipment arranged in the best possible manner, storage and counter space to spare, ample room to accommodate visitors, and a healthy dose of atmosphere.

1 West coast craftsman kitchen
By the time Grace Gilroy acquired her large home in Vancouver's popular Kitsilano area, it had suffered a couple of insensitive, 1970s-style renovations. Buried beneath the shag carpet and canary yellow melamine kitchen cabinets was a home once filled with history and character. According to architect Keith Jakobsen, who did extensive research on both the house and its general era before embarking on the renovation – which included creating this new, larger kitchen – the house was one of Kitsilano's first, built in 1908 by a hardware magnate shortly after the area was logged. As Gilroy and Jakobsen tackled the project, authenticity was the watchword. And for Gilroy and her partner, Paul Roscorla, that meant taking many of their cues from the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Scottish architect and artist whose craftsman ethic can be found in many of the kitchen's surface details. The custom cabinetry is all wood, painted off-white, the colour Mackintosh preferred for his wood trim. Poured glass tiles – another Mackintosh signature – enliven the tumbled slate backsplash. The lighting fixtures, such as those over the large island, the hardware and the old-fashioned, mottled glass cabinet fronts, all suggest a turn-of-the-century kitchen. Gilroy and Roscorla, who love to entertain, are thrilled with its polished, 'urban country' atmosphere. "We spend all our time here now," says Gilroy.