A Leather District Kitchen

Last summer I was contacted by a new client who was moving from Manhattan to Boston to be closer to her daughter and grandchildren. She had just purchased a loft in Boston's Leather District and wanted help renovating her kitchen and bathroom. Here is the before:

The kitchen was not terrible (the bathroom was, I will show you that later) but the big fail was that it looked like a typical condo kitchen shoved in the corner of this huge, open, wonderful space. Loft spaces are not about hard lines defining this area from that. They are about seamless flow and spaces that spill over into the next. The whole is definitely greater than the sum of it's parts.

So my goal with re-designing this space was to break it up and weave the kitchen space into the rest of this massive living space. We eliminated the overhead cabinets that were sadly hiding the beautiful, original columns.  We relocated that storage space to large plate drawers in the base cabinets, full height pantry storage on the refrigerator wall, and a series of open shelves for everyday use. The kitchen footprint was enlarged and centered on the two columns it awkwardly straddled in the before shots. We built out a second pantry/storage unit in the space directly facing the kitchen area and painted the original factory door, which you can only see in the before photos by the hula-hoop that hangs on it, a chalky black. And after I begged and pleaded we kept that gorgeous, gorgeous floor.

Here is the after:

The Boston Globe ran a piece on this kitchen yesterday and I think they nailed it when describing the ins and outs of this specific project. My two sentence summary would be: City work is hard, but city work is fun. Helping showcase people's best personal style can be hard, but helping showcase people's best personal style is fun.

Thank you Doug Most for writing the article and thank you Michael J. Lee for the beautiful photos.