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Play Space Chuck and Anna Dietsche specialize in vacation cottages, a casual breed of house that presents a paradoxically rigorous challenge for their designers. Day-to-day houses are about reality, Chuck Dietsche says. Vacation places, on the other hand, embody their owners’ dream notions of retreat and escape, so the bar can be higher. “Every person has a different sense of what their ideal is.” In this North Carolina barrier island retreat, Dietsche says, the ideal was “really cottage-like, really cute,” and child-like in the emotions it evokes. An upside-down arrangement put the wide-open kitchen/dining/living space at treetop level, where it enjoys views of a nearby salt marsh, and allowed the Dietsches to play on the romanticism of a steeply pitched roof with elaborate trusses.

To make the kitchen part of the larger space, the architects used the same palette of colors and materials as in the living and dining areas: Honduran mahogany floors, painted wood cabinets and walls, white window trim. They chose simple white solid-surface material for the main counters, “to be part of the millwork, an extension of the sill.” The exception to this low-key approach is the island, which they conceived as a furnishing, “rather than as part of the architecture.” Its colors and countertop materials contrast with the kitchen’s “built-in” elements, and its whimsical curved form strikes just the right storybook note.

CH060401077L12.jpg View image gallery. Photographer: Randy O’Rourke Builder: Lokey Building Concepts, Bald Head Island, N.C.; Architect: Dietsche + Dietsche Architects, Wilmington, N.C.; Project size: 250 square feet; Construction cost: Withheld; Photographer: Randy O’Rourke. Floor Plan Builder: Lokey Building Concepts, Bald Head Island, N.C.; Architect: Dietsche + Dietsche Architects, Wilmington, N.C.; Project size: 250 square feet; Construction cost: Withheld. A steeply pitched roof overhead, cottage-like materials, and whimsical detailing make this kitchen an instant vacation. Builder: Lokey Building Concepts, Bald Head Island, N.C.; Architect: Dietsche + Dietsche Architects, Wilmington, N.C.; Project size: 250 square feet; Construction cost: Withheld; Photographer: Randy O’Rourke. Project Credits:
Builder: Lokey Building Concepts, Bald Head Island, N.C.; Architect: Dietsche + Dietsche Architects, Wilmington, N.C.; Project size: 250 square feet; Construction cost: Withheld; Photographer: Randy O’Rourke.

Resources:
Countertops: DuPont Corian; Dishwasher: Bosch; Hardware: Nifty Nob, Rocky Mountain, and Von Morris; Kitchen plumbing fittings/fixtures: Rohl; Lighting fixtures: Rejuvenation and Woolen Mill Fan Co.; Oven: Dacor; Paint: Benjamin Moore; Patio doors/windows: Pozzi; Refrigerator: GE Appliances.

Details
With its elevated perspective on a nearby salt marsh, this kitchen maximizes views by pushing out into a wide, windowed bay. Architects Anna and Chuck Dietsche brought the indoors even closer by dropping the sills of the windows to counter height. It took some doing to convince the owners that they wouldn’t miss wall cabinets. By concentrating storage on an adjacent pantry wall, though, this kitchen holds as much as would a more conventional layout.