Design Confidently, Live Comfortably
| March/April 2005 A Change of Space New Uses for Old Things We’re not “shiny-new” people -- we like well-used stuff that has a history, patina, and glow. So the vintage look we were going for in our kitchen resonates with every aspect of our lives, both in our home and in our antiques shop. We found lots of ways to insert antique elements into our new kitchen. For months we harvested old wavy glass from discarded windows. Installing these vintage panes into the newly milled upper cabinets gave them heft and a bit of age. At a salvage yard we bought an old porcelain sink and then had our plumber retrofit it with a bar-sink drain. (The old drain diameter is smaller than current sink drain sizes.)
Our lighting is a mixture of new and old. It’s important to have good overhead lighting in a kitchen, so we installed recessed lights in the ceiling and hung a pendant lamp above the sink. The vintage halophane industrial light, made of fluted glass and steel, brings a lot of light into the room and adds a cool contrast to the warmth of the kitchen. We used real tongue-and-groove beadboard as the back-splash above the counter -- it adds charm to the kitchen at a fraction of the cost of marble, which was our original choice. We used beadboard as the backing in the glass-faced cabinets as well. The entire kitchen project took 10 months, and we estimate it ran about a third the cost of the average kitchen renovation (see next page). Although during the process we were miserable, toting armfuls of dirty dishes to the basement laundry tub and cooking one-pot meals on a plug-in burner, in the end it was worth it. Not long after we finished the kitchen, I threw Tom a surprise birthday party and invited 20 friends and neighbors. Here we were in this enormous house with a well-furnished living room, parlor, and new dining room, and everyone pulled chairs around the peninsula in the kitchen -- the true sign of a successful kitchen design. NEXT: A Kitchen at One Third the Cost |
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PHOTOS EXCEPT WHERE NOTED: KAREN TANAKA |
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