Kitchen Before And After See This Welcoming Tudor Revival Kitchen

Bumped out over a basement crawl space, the kitchen was uninsulated, uncomfortable, and separated from the small sitting area where their breakfast table sat. It was also disconnected from the nearby dining room. The couple, who have a 4-year-old son, assumed they would need extensive structural work to gain the openness, seating, and entertaining space their kitchen lacked. But six years after moving into their Philadelphia home, their sister-in-law hit on an easier solution: Relocate the kitchen. “Once she said it, we couldn’t get the thought out of our heads,” Courtney says. Enter designer Sean Lewis of Airy Kitchens, who drew up plans to transform the former sitting room into a colorful new kitchen and turn the old kitchen into a laundry/mudroom, preserving its retro pink-and-black tile and boosting comfort by insulating the ceiling and adding a vapor barrier below. To make the new kitchen appear even more spacious, Lewis suggested dramatically widening the small arched passageway that led to the dining room, keeping just enough wall to retain the original crown molding that frames the ceiling. The attention to detail paid off. “As soon as the kitchen was done, it felt like it had always been that way,” says Courtney. “It fits perfectly into our house—and our lives.” Magnetic chalkboard paint turns an arched opening into a message center.Paint: Artichoke (kitchen cabinets) Sherwin-WilliamsCountertops: CaesarstoneRadiator: Governale The kitchen offers welcome workspace for homeowner Courtney Jewell, who grows flowers for a community-supported agriculture venture.Kitchen sink: KohlerKitchen faucet: Danze

Accent Wall

Patterned cement tile above the cooktop creates the “big statement” Courtney wanted. Open shelves flank a chimney-style vent hood and provide spots for display; electrical outlets are hidden on the undersides of the lower ones.Backsplash tile: Cement Tile ShopCabinet pulls, hutch knobs: AmerockVent hood: Broan

Stealth Storage

With few upper cabinets, efficient drawers fill the base cabinets. This one is customized to store cooking utensils.Custom Cabinets: Airy Kitchens

Graceful Connection

To give the new kitchen additional breathing room, Lewis enlarged the existing 4 -foot-wide arch leading into the dining room, creating a nearly 10-foot-wide opening. Leaving the wall partially intact preserved the dining room’s original tray ceiling.Pendants: Joss & Main

Hardworking Wall

Floor-to-ceiling Shaker-style cabinets, updated with black hardware, line the wall opposite the cooktop. The French-door fridge and double ovens were high on the homeowners’ wish list for the remodel.Cooktop, double wall ovens, dishwasher: Thermador

Color Cue

Switching up the color palette with this blue custom-built hutch marks the transition from the kitchen side of the arch to the dining room side. It faces the cookbook shelves on the end of the peninsula.Paint: Porch Ceiling (blue hutch); Sherwin-Williams

Cookie-sheet Central

Storage works best when everything that will be needed is near the action. A cabinet above the double ovens stores cutting boards and baking sheets; doors to the right of the ovens conceal four pull-out shelves that provide pantry storage. Tucked between two archways, the cooktop wall’s display shelves and patterned cement tile create a statement that doesn’t overpower the space. As luck would have it, existing windows were at a perfect height for locating the sink cabinets beneath them, flooding the room with light and offering views out the back. BEFOREThe stone house’s 126-square-foot kitchen was trapped in an uninsulated extension. A sitting room hosted the breakfast table. AFTERRelocating the kitchen to the 148-square-foot sitting room next door gave it more space, as did expanding into the old dining room by widening an existing archway and placing a peninsula and extra cabinets under and beyond it.