KBB Winner and Magazine Cover: Bayou Beauty New Construction

This new home is a study in eclectic contrasts.

The client loves modern design yet still wanted to blend a bit of traditional heritage into the overall feel of her new home. Entertaining kitchen was the buzzword! The goal was to combine functionality in a large space with many unique details that spoke to the client’s love of artistic creativity and rich materials yet still worked perfectly for heavy entertaining! Large kitchens are really not always easy to make work and need a good balance between aesthetics and function to be successful.

Challenges and Solutions:

With 14 foot ceilings the challenge was to not let the kitchen space “underwhelm” the rest of the open floor plan as the kitchen, dining and great room all are part of the larger footprint. To this end, we designed a modern enclosure that allowed additional height and heft to help balance the “weight” of the kitchen with the other areas.

The long island designed for entertaining features on one end, a custom designed iron “table” housing the microwave drawer and topped with a check board end grain cherry and walnut wood top. The back of the island is ebonized ash veneer. The Wolf microwave drawer would have been perfect here as it is so sleek but unfortunately it was not in production when cabinetry was constructed.

The upper cabinets have unusual triple ring iron inserts, again, designed for the unexpected use of material richness..along with the antique mirror rather than glass as the background.

The panels on the Subzero refrigerator are crafted from burled walnut veneer chosen to echo the browns and blacks throughout much of the furnishings. This was a designed feature meant to accentuate rich materials.

The client did not want or need a large range in the main kitchen as we planned a second ancillary oven in the adjacent pantry. When I pointed out the 36 inch Wolf range had a larger oven capacity than a 30 inch wall oven then that sealed the deal!

The hood also needed to have a certain “weighty” feel in the kitchen to balance the large scale design. It is constructed of cold rolled steel and is 60 inches long as to provide more “presence” in the cooking center. Note the mirrored glass shelf behind the range!

On the left elevation, we chose to run the 4×16 calcutta gold backsplash material up the wall and utilize thick glass shelves for some visual interest in this corner.The cabinetry was channeled and the glass slid in then the end was capped to hide the channel. It is seamless! This area would be tough to access with doors as well.

The pantry cabinet is home to an integrated Wolf warming drawer completely disguised.

The countertops needed to be a lighter hue for dark/light balance so we used calcutta gold, a nod to traditional use of materials that sets off the dark walnut cabinetry.