Jon Miller/Hedrich Blessing
Gables, dormers, and a corner tower lend the limestone-clad home…
Designing an open kitchen is easy; just erase a couple of walls. Designing an open kitchen that functions as well for cooking as it does for hanging out is another matter entirely. The kitchen of this California beachfront home is wide open to an adjacent sitting room and breakfast bay, to the open roof above, and to the ocean view.
“Everybody tends to hang out in the kitchen,” says architect Mary Andrulaitis, “so there’s plenty of room for that.” And thanks to some judicious out-sourcing of storage, this kitchen works as well as it plays.
The main kitchen efficiently handles cooking and primary storage functions. The island—topped, like all the counters, with Carrara marble—houses the microwave, trash compactor, wine storage, and shelves for cookbooks. The backsplash adjacent to the range opens to reveal an appliance storage garage. It is the back side of the range wall, though, that hides the mother lode of bulk storage: a 12-foot bank of cabinets that is convenient to the kitchen but well out of sight and in no position to block any view. Because this double-loaded cabinet wall is capped off below the height of the exposed rafter ties, “It lets the ceiling, which is a big feature in that room, read through,” Andrulaitis says. Across a corridor from these bonus cabinets is a separate walk-in pantry with a second refrigerator.
Project Credits
Builder: D.D. Ford Construction, Santa Barbara, Calif.
Architect: Neumann Mendro Andrulaitis, Carpinteria, Calif.
Project size: 315 square feet
Construction cost: Withheld
Photographer: Bill Zeldis
Resources: Dishwasher: Kitchen Aid; Flooring: Patina Floors; Garbage disposer: In-Sink-Erator; Lighting fixtures: Iris; Oven: Wolf; Plumbing fittings/fixtures: Franke and Grohe; Refrigerator: Sub-Zero; Trash compactor: Viking; Windows: Architectural Millwork.
