Cupboard Love
I am not one for following trends particularly and over the years have developed my own interior style. I love to mix and match and feel comfortable with sleek modern as a foil for recycled vintage or antique pieces. My next kitchen, yes there will be a next, will be from scratch in so much as not inherited and will definitely be bespoke. That’s not to say I won’t utilise existing fitments, I may well do but I intend to break the rules. I’ve always been loathe to remove existing kitchens in houses I have bought they have mostly been fit for purpose and I have always been good at updating and renovating what’s in place. In fact, I have only ever put two completely new kitchens in any of my houses, one in my own and one in a rental, neither ended up being exactly me.
Over the years I have learnt what works and what doesn’t and my design board above gives a flavour of the ideas I would like to incorporate. It mixes sleek black or wood worktops with traditional shaker style kitchen floor cabinets, built in carpentry and free standing glass fronted cupboard and not a wall cupboard to be seen.
Having seen a number of kitchens where some if not all of the upper cabinets have been absent it certainly opens the room up. You may well ask where then do you put all the things you need to hand and the stuff that seems to fill every available kitchen cupboard in a conventional kitchen? In my case I will have a pantry or larder, an actual room. I intend to annex a part of the room build a wall add a door and shelve it out floor to ceiling to take all my large kitchen equipment and food staples, tins etc. Shelves for these will be narrow or tiered so that I can see at a glance what I have. No more emptying everything out for that can of plum tomatoes or tin of beans you were sure you bought last week. I’ll be looking at larders and pantries in a future post.
In the kitchen itself I will have a few open shelves to hold spices and rails for kitchen tools. No tiles but a return on the work surface and plain painted walls. I plan to pull together all the best things I installed in other houses so behind the hob I’ll fix a heat resistant glass panel that is easy to wipe clean, no grout to get greasy and dingy, no boredom or regrets of tile choice. Fancy a change just repaint the walls a different colour. I shall not be filling the shelves with fripperies either. The kitchen is the one room that gets greasy dust, I don’t even fry much stuff either but I seem to forever be cleaning and having to wash down rarely used items is not my idea of a day well spent. It’s enough with the cooker hood, that’s another smooth surface without angles I need to consider installing so its a simple weekly wash down.
I already have an eclectic mix of free standing furniture – a long bench from a farmhouse that has a big handy cupboard used for housing my baking trays and tins, with a big shelf at the other end which holds a wine rack. I have a glass door cabinet, currently distressed but probably getting a new paint job in any future kitchen, not to match but to tone in. It holds all my daily use crockery, serving dishes, plates and casseroles. On top of the cabinet is a multi drawer piece that holds spices and a collection of wooden trays, a french wire stand and a basket. Out of shot on top of the drawers is a wooden rooster box, literally its a box that held a rooster. A couple of christmas ago I bought a capon that came in this wooden box filled with straw, now it holds the overflow of spices. We had a high breakfast bar bench custom made from reclaimed oak and the four stools that go with it are a mix of urban and industrial, the cat shouldn’t be up there but he is belligerent, what can I say.
Of course, I have to find my next house with a large enough kitchen that I can put all these ideas in, it is on my criteria list and I will keep you posted!
