Design Experts
How To Make A Small Kitchen Work Better, According To A Designer
Design, Christine Elliott, Christine Elliott Designs | Photography, Virginia Macdonald | Styling, Christine Hanlon
Design Experts
How To Make A Small Kitchen Work Better, According To A Designer
This kitchen reno by Christine Elliott has big fixes for the room’s tiny footprint and captures all the charm of yesteryear.
Preserving the original charm of the small kitchen in their circa-1937 home in Oshawa, Ont., was a priority for designer Christine Elliott’s clients—but so was creating more open space for entertaining.
CONTRACTOR, Paradisaic Building Group. Custom CABINETRY, Lighthouse Cabinetry. FRIDGE, Elmira Stove Works. FAUCETS, Waterstone Faucets. STOOLS, Design Within Reach. PITCHERS, Veranda. KNOBS, cup-style DRAWER PULLS, Etsy.
“This area was three separate spaces,” says Christine. Now, with two walls removed to open the kitchen to the dining room (across from the island, where the range is) and sunroom (where the new blue cabinets are), the room is welcoming, works beautifully, and perfectly suits the home’s architecture.
Here are Christine’s top tips for making a small kitchen work like a modern one while keeping its irreplaceable period charm.
How to make a small kitchen feel bigger
- “The client picked this fridge before I even met them!” Christine says, noting that its colour determined the paint colour for the kitchen walls and the millwork throughout the house. Even the layout of the kitchen was planned around the sweet vintage-look piece.
-
Cabinets in the cooking and entertaining areas were treated to different colours to visually separate the zones. The blue cabinets are next to the door to the backyard and provide storage for “everything you need for inside and outside entertaining, including hidden freezer drawers, a beverage fridge and a beautiful round cast-iron sink,” says Christine.
-
She maximized space in the small cooking zone by adding hidden pullout drawers in the toe kicks for things like cookie sheets. To the left of the sink is a pullout for a step ladder, which makes reaching the top shelves of the uppers easy and safe. Glass insets in the white upper cabinets offer space to display less frequently used decorative items.
-
“The goal in the home was to mix the old with the new,” Christine says. The kitchen’s layered lighting plan allowed her to develop that mix. “I loved the shape of the island pendants. They were one of the first items we sourced for the space,” she says. “The light over the sink is vintage and was originally intended for the primary bedroom’s closet, but we decided it was too pretty to hide upstairs!” Brass detailing and a similar scale link these fixtures visually. New brass sconces above the blue cabinets add another layer and evoke an old library feel. “The criteria for the brass elements here and throughout the house was that they needed to either look old or develop a patina eventually, like our beautiful Waterstone faucets,” says Christine. “This helped us to create a unified look while using many different styles.”
-
Black barstools continue Christine’s use of black as an accent throughout the house, and relate to nearby black-and-white striped dining chairs.
-
The owners wanted to display their collection of glassware and spirits, so Christine installed an antique-finish mirror backsplash below the blue cabinets and used the same material in the interior of the glass-door uppers. “The antiqued mirror softens the lines of the bottles, so they aren’t overly apparent in the reflection,” says Christine. “And since every bottle is different, it also lessened the contrast between them.”
-
The wall shelves between the work zone and the blue cabinetry were carefully styled. “We tried a lot of combinations of objects and most felt too busy,” says Christine. But when she found the cute little pitchers, she knew they were perfect. “They add just enough interest without being distracting.”
5 Canadian Furniture Stores We Love
Comments