Kitchen of the Week: Garden Connections in a Period Cottage

Photos by Cindy Apple

Kitchen at a Glance
Who lives here: A couple
Location: Seattle
Size: 243 square feet (23 square meters)
Designers: Sara Emhoff (architecture) and Abbas Rachaman (interior design) of Board & Vellum

The home is a charming Victorian-era cottage with a lovely backyard. However, the existing kitchen lacked a strong connection to the yard. “The indoor-outdoor connection was so important,” Emhoff says. “The couple who live here own a poetry printing press and host a lot of gatherings with friends and family, including poetry readings.”

Before, the pantry, laundry space and powder room were located along the back of the house, blocking the kitchen off from the yard. Emhoff relocated these spaces to open the kitchen to the yard. This was a game changer.

A small side porch (left) inspired a wraparound extension off the back of the house. The porch enhances the Victorian architecture, provides cover for a seating area and creates a transitional space between the kitchen and the yard. Herbs and vegetables grow in containers in the garden.

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Here’s the view through the kitchen out to the backyard. Note the home’s original molding framing the opening in the foreground and the high baseboards on the left. “We matched the original moldings that are in the rest of the house in the kitchen,” Rachaman says. Both the original and the new trim are dark-stained Douglas fir.

The shelves on the right accommodate ceramics collected on travels abroad, books and antique cookware that the couple wanted to display. Glass doors wrap two sides of the kitchen. “It was important to our clients that the house respect the original Victorian-era architecture, and they wanted French doors,” Emhoff says.

While there was room for two hinged French doors on the right side of the kitchen, there wasn’t ample room for the swing of hinged doors at the back. “Our compromise there was to use sliding doors with panes that made them resemble French doors,” Emhoff says.

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The layout of the kitchen revolves around an island measuring 8 by 3⅓ feet. “We placed seating on three sides of the island so that during gatherings people could have conversations across the island. Also, our clients like to eat breakfast together here,” Rachaman says. The island contains storage and a microwave drawer. The light fixture overhead adds a modern touch, and its barely-there silhouette preserves views of the garden.

One of the homeowners loves to cook and bake. The other’s interest in the culinary arts lies primarily in enjoying food. “The cook had a lot of specialty tools and gadgets he wanted to use,” Rachaman says. “He cooks Asian food a lot and wanted specific places to put things like the small bowls he likes to serve it in.” The designers planned storage to house items like this, as well as spices, mixing bowls, baking sheets and cutting boards. The homeowner also has a large cookbook collection, and the designers tailored the island to house them.

One quirky part of the renovation involved one of the homeowners’ cold morning swims in Lake Washington. “He hangs his wetsuit to dry in the coat closet,” Emhoff says. “He wanted the fridge to back up to this closet so the heat coming off it would help dry the wetsuit.” There’s a vented wall between the back of the fridge and the coat closet.

Cabinetry: Bellmont Cabinet; cabinet paint: Olympic Range, Sherwin-Williams; wall paint: Pink Ground, Farrow & Ball

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The hinged French doors face the side yard and open to the wraparound porch.

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