A small but clever "cooking bay" addition to this historic home created the extra space and flow this kitchen needed.
As with anything, a home begins with a fresh, clear face that over time wears the marks of its life, including ensuing redesigns diminishing the structure’s original appearance. Homeowner Melanie and her husband and their young boys learned this when they moved into a 1920s center hall Georgian colonial in a historic Baltimore neighborhood. They found things like heart oak floors covered with vinyl and terra cotta countertops in the kitchen, which might have seemed right in the 1970s, but didn’t fit the family’s modern sensibilities or the home’s historic heritage.
In addition to the design don’ts of yesteryear, the original early 20th century home design worked against it, lacking the openness desired by modern families. This was especially evident in the kitchen and family area. Melanie grappled with adding more space while avoiding further divergence from the home’s historic identity.
“The biggest concern in renovating a 1920s house is maintaining the character. So I didn’t want to see a big box attached to my house,” Melanie explains. “But it meant we had to maximize every inch of space, and that took so much time and planning.”Melanie developed the interior design concepts for the kitchen. “My goal was to create a beautiful room that was an extension of our living space and still have the functionality,” she says. “The thing about this project is that at the same time we did the kitchen, we were remodeling both sun porches. One is now a beautiful walnut library for my husband and the other is a playroom for my children.”
Houses built in the 1920s tend to be long and narrow, with enclosed butler’s pantries in the back. The architectural result is a tight feeling, dark corridor. “The challenge was that the location of the original kitchen wasn’t designed for the way we live now,” explains project architect Laura Thomas, partner at Melville Thomas Architects in Baltimore. “It wasn’t connected to the other spaces. Nor was it wide enough to accommodate an island.”
The trick for Thomas was taking all of the elements of the historic proportion and functionality apart and putting them back together in a way that suited Melanie’s objectives. Working with the neighborhood’s architectural review board, Thomas strove for additional space that didn’t look out of place.
“Living in a historic neighborhood, the goal at the end of the day was to make the addition look like it had always been there,” Thomas says.
The existing kitchen’s long narrow space made adding a central island very difficult. “The solution was to bump out a two-foot-deep cooking bay with a small scale roof,” Thomas says. “With that, we were able to pick up the width and get a lot of improved space in a very small footprint. The cooking bay is something I’ve done before, and I’d do it again. Architecturally, it looks like a traditional bay.”
Installed within the cooking bay is a Wolf range with a handmade copper hood. The bay’s back wall is Calcutta Gold Marble, an unusual but appropriate choice for this kitchen’s scheme. “I wanted a clean space that I could change seasonally,” says Melanie. “So I really liked the white and silver. The countertop is limestone. The white, gray and pewter combination was my palette.”
The hood was one of the many unique elements Melanie collected for the kitchen from companies around the world. “The range hood was custom designed. I had it made in Canada at Rocky Mountain Copper Works. They gave it a zinc finish with standing seems to mimic the home’s copper roof,” describes Melanie.
Tips For Making Neighborhood Architectural Reviews EasierArchitect Laura Thomas shares a few ideas to help renovating home- owners deal more effectively with local architectural review boards, often a source of costly delays and issues if not handled correctly.
1. Do your homework. Understand the design character and materials of the neighborhood.
2. As the homeowner, make personal contact with the chairperson or group leader.Find out when their meetings are and how their review process unfolds.
3. Get some early design information to the group. Early design development drawings are fine for this. Take lots of notes so any comments or alterations can be implemented early in the design process.
4. Inform your neighbors prior to the official review. If the review group doesn’t already do this as part of its process, it’s just good practice and minimizes fallout after the board’s final decision.
5. Send in final design development or construction documents with photos.And be available for questions.
Another standout is the main sink, a handmade fireclay model from French company Herbeau, which also produces copper sinks. The Herbeau sink was topped with Grohe’s Bridgeford model faucet, as was an additional sink installed in the island. However, Melanie’s search for a distinctive sink came with the cost of considerable project delays. “Getting the sink took forever because it’s handmade,” Melanie remembers. “The manufacturer had a problem with a batch of clay that necessitated destroying a whole shipment of sinks. Everything was back ordered.”
Throughout the kitchen, pantry, and added office space, Melanie installed custom cabinetry by Christopher Peacock Cabinetry in Greenwich, Connecticut. Kitchen appliances included a Fisher & Paykel DishDrawer® and an Asko standard dishwasher, as well as a Sub-Zero refrigerator and wine cooler.
The added bay wasn’t the only space solution necessary. A second challenge was connecting the kitchen to the rest of the rooms, which meant extending the existing enclosed pantry another eight feet from the original footprint and surrounding it in glass to create a new dining area. Doing that provided space to move the pantry area adjacent to the kitchen and created more of a logical flow throughout the first floor.
“These houses weren’t originally designed that way. But now, people want more open space,” says Thomas. “By doing what we did, we were able to connect the kitchen to the sun room. Before, the pantry was stuck at the end of the room, blocking all views to the yard. Opening up the outdoor and indoor spaces is an improvement.”
Opening up the space also opened up some structural problems for general contractor Paul Lidard of Lidco Construction. At one end he had to deal with a load-bearing wall, and at the other was an existing incinerator and chimney that needed to be removed. “At the end of the kitchen where it leads into the breakfast room was a brick wall supporting the story above,” says Lidard. “So there was an interesting process of shoring it up and reinforcing it with structural steel. But all we do is work with older houses. So there wasn’t anything that we hadn’t seen before.”
The resulting backyard view afforded by opening the space was more than worth the work. “What we have now is a really clean view of the backyard and its big Magnolia tree,” Melanie beams. “The yard is really beautiful, so dramatic compared to what it was.”
Mark S. Reeve is a freelance writer living in Ocean View, Delaware.
Contacts:
Lidco Construction: lidcoconstruction.com or 410-377-7700
Melville Thomas Architects, Inc.: mtarx.com or 410-433-4400
Resources:
Christopher Peacock Cabinetry: peacockcabinetry.com or 203-862-9333
