When this waterfront vacation home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore was built in the early 20th century, well-off homeowners didn’t spend their time cooking. Kitchens were the servants’ domain and tended, like the original one here, to be dark, small, and isolated from the rest of the house. Architect Chip Bohl tweaked the floor plan to create a relationship between the kitchen and its adjoining rooms. He ripped out the upper half of the wall between the kitchen and a screened-in porch, installing a row of custom-made casement windows. After converting the porch into a light-filled mudroom, he added a bay window and built-in table to the kitchen’s north wall.The slate table blasts right through the bay and keeps going as an outdoor picnic table, linking the room to the home’s patio and yard. Though a doorway into the dining room already existed next to the range, Bohl added another one on the other side of the cooktop to ease traffic flow between the two spaces.
His design for a curvy plaster range hood eliminates fan noise from the kitchen, since the hood vents out cooking smells through a remote fan in the attic. Resilient cork flooring also works well acoustically, absorbing excess sound. The room’s horizontal paneling harks back to traditional beadboard, but with a twist: It’s made of luxurious mahogany rather than the standard pine. With its unusual mix of materials, newly fluid boundaries, and inviting mint-green color scheme, the kitchen’s days as a closed-off afterthought are long gone.
Project Credits
Builder: Winchester Construction, Annapolis, Md.
Architect: Bohl Architects, Annapolis
Project size: 230 square feet
Construction cost: Withheld
Photographer: Celia Pearson Resources: Dishwasher: Miele; Lighting: Artemide; Plumbing fixtures: Franke; Range/warming drawer: Thermador.
