The design brief for this kitchen in Mission Bay, Tāmaki Makaurau came by way of a watercolour. The client is an artist, and to express what he wanted, he turned to the thing he knows best – a painting to show the idea. “So we took that and came up with the concept and the layout, and brought it to life,” says Allie Cowan, owner with husband Logan of The Kitchen & Cabinet Co.
The kitchen is part of an expansive modern extension to an original stucco house. It has a loosely mid-century feel, with lots of wooden cabinetry, rich colour and unobstructed clean lines. As well as the kitchen itself, the clients wanted a built-in banquette in the same language to make the space feel cohesive. “We’ve used tōtara veneer which is really special and quite hard to come by,” says Allie. “It gives that beautiful rich warmth that we were looking for.”
The kitchen sits at the heart of the home. It revolves around a very large island, which is propped up on 300mm legs that make it feel something like a piece of furniture, and allow the polished floor to remain on show. Behind that, there’s a tall bank of cabinetry with a double oven and an integrated fridge-freezer. A further block of cabinetry houses an induction hob with built-in downdraught. This, too, is on legs. Behind that is a large scullery, which does the heavy lifting on storage and clean-up – vital for a hospitable family with kids.
Keeping the lines clean and unobstructed made for some tricky details. The main dishwasher is in the scullery and is used for on-the-go clean-up, but there’s also a Fisher & Paykel DishDrawer in the raised island: the waste for this and the sink flows down and out through a central column disguised by timber the same as the floor. Meanwhile, the vent for the downdraught is directed backwards into the wall and out through the floor.
The legs on the island would typically finish with a foot, allowing the cabinet maker to easily adjust them. Here, Logan and his team fashioned black-painted timber feet flush with the legs, which they precisely honed up and down to make the island perfectly level. Similarly, the linen-feel stainless steel only comes in a certain sheet size; instead of a join, they designed a lower bench, up to which you can pull a stool. “It’s a really big island,” says Logan, “so it was nice to break it up.”
The tōtara veneer was another exercise in painstaking detail. For a start, it’s softer than many other timbers until you put a lacquer on it, and it can vary quite a bit from batch to batch. When the timber came into the workshop, Logan and the team laid it out, carefully matching the colours for different parts of the kitchen – island, wall cabinetry and scullery. They also ensured the grain matched on the drawer fronts. “There is a high attention to detail in a project such as this,” he says, “where the small details make all the difference in the overall aesthetic.”
The scullery is crucial to the organisation of the kitchen, as are the carefully thought-out drawers. Just beside the hob, there’s a Blum Space Twin – a narrow pull-out cabinet for spices and oil, as well as chopping boards. In the scullery, there are inner drawers for cutlery and cups. Such attention to detail meant maximising the storage throughout, without the need for overhead cupboards. This freed up room for the owner’s collection of vintage coffee machines. “Just opening up all that space above it makes a huge impact,” says Allie.
While the original watercolour was meant as a starting point, Allie and Logan were surprised to look back recently and see how closely the finished object reflects the initial idea. “They had a great vision for the space,” says Allie. “It was wonderful seeing it come to life.”
