Kitchen of the Week: Galley Goes From Overflowing to Organized

Photos by Ursula Armstrong

Kitchen at a Glance
Who lives here: A single woman
Location: Ingatestone, Essex, England
Size: 85 square feet (8 square meters); 13 by 6½ feet
Designer: Natasha Burton of NB Interiors UK

With no change to the layout, the owner was focused on “wanting her kitchen to feel more light and airy, less cluttered and more in keeping with her style and the property,” Burton says.

“She’d lived there for around 10 years and had inherited the kitchen, so it looked quite tired,” Burton says. “She didn’t want to rip out all the existing cabinets, which were still in good condition, but wanted the room to work better and look more like the rest of her house.”

The owner had homed in on one of Natasha’s early projects on Houzz — a kitchen in a very small cottage she’d revamped, retaining the original cabinet boxes and painting the doors. “She liked that I’d worked in such a small space before — and reused the cabinets,” Burton says.

The sustainable decision to keep the original cabinets may suggest this revamp was a small project. In fact, from start to finish, the job took six weeks and almost everything else was updated.

“Because it’s such a small space, we could only fit in one trade at a time,” Burton says. “There was also quite a lot to do — we changed all the flooring, the radiator, the backsplash, the countertops and all the cupboard doors, repainted, retiled and designed and built a bespoke range hood cover. It was almost a full refurb.”

Wall paint: Loft White, Little Greene; cabinet doors: Naked Kitchens; cabinet paint: Ruse, Paint & Paper Library

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The project was streamlined thanks to the help of Houzz Pro tools, including the Product Clipper, which meant the owner could simply click to approve items Burton had put onto a Houzz mood board.

The owner moved out to a place nearby during the remodel, but Burton could keep in touch via the shared Houzz Scheduler. “That was really helpful, so [the owner] could stay up to speed on where we were on the project and which trades were in when.”

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The owner wanted to stick with white for the walls and countertops, which are quartz, and was a little apprehensive about adding color. Even the countertop is white. “She was quite nervous about adding color, but I suggested painting just the base units and we picked this pink.”

Before: Previously, the kitchen had felt cluttered. The owner, however, knew she didn’t need more storage, and she had a big clear-out before work began.

Some architectural features added to the cramped look too. Wall cabinets, heavy cornicing around the door, dark wood doors and a huge mound of hanging coats in the entry just beyond the far end of the room were all visually oppressive. “Stripping off the picture rail and cornicing around the door made a huge difference,” Burton says.

The wood-effect laminate flooring and wood countertops also went, along with the overmounted sink and a row of wall cabinets that sandwiched a prominent stainless-steel range hood.

Burton also changed the door here for two half doors with glazing, which she painted white to help streamline and brighten the area. “They take up less space when they’re open and make it all much lighter,” she says.

Brass plates are a nice detail and help to tie the design into the era of the house. There are more antique brass details around the kitchen, shown lower down. “[The owner] wanted it to feel modern but also to look quite classic,” she says.

Burton relocated the coats to a newly positioned rack behind the wall with the framed picture. “It looks less fussy now,” she says. In place of the original coat rack, she installed neat shelves with basket storage to keep laundry paraphernalia out of the way.

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Before: There were also a lot of things hanging from the wall opposite the cabinet run that felt busy and weren’t well located for cooking. These subway tiles also went.

Hooks for utensils are now, more handily, on one side of the cooktop, with hanging baskets on the other side for pegs and general “kitchen bits and bobs.”

Rails are attached to the underside of new shelves that Burton installed to replace the wall cabinets.

The shelves are stained to match a new custom range hood that reduces the visual impact of the vent, instead creating a feature of the solid European oak from which it and the shelves are made.

“The range hood was quite the challenge,” Burton says. “That particular material was very expensive, but was the best on the market for what we wanted — to go around a range hood.”

Burton used a combination of tiles in the kitchen to break up the white walls.

The fluted section is 3D paneling that’s glued to the wall and painted. “It’s waterproof, so it’s perfect for a kitchen,” Burton says. “We took the quartz countertop quite high and into the windowsill, so tiles would have looked odd above it there. It was about finding something else that would keep the surface looking interesting.

“We’ve only used it on that wall,” she says. “Taking it all the way around the room would have been too much, especially with the textured tiles opposite.”

Discotheque floor and backsplash tiles: Claybrook; 3D wall paneling: Orac Decor

The cabinet handles as well as the undermounted sink are brass, which warms up the space.

The traditional-style faucet is also brass and adds a touch of Victorian style — something Burton and the owner felt was important, given the era of the house.

The boiler remained in its original location, but Burton concealed it inside a new wall cabinet, painted to blend in with the walls to help it disappear. “Your eye instead goes to the wood and the range hood,” Burton says.

Two of the kitchen’s cabinet doors conceal a washing machine and an undercounter refrigerator with a freezer compartment.

She installed floating shelves with integrated LED lighting and hanging rails underneath, which she felt looked neater with the fluted walls.

“We wanted open shelving because it felt more homey to have things on display, and [the owner] didn’t want it to look clinical, which is a risk with an all-white space.”

The new glazed door at this end leads into the dining room.

You can see the wall opposite the kitchen more clearly here. Burton replaced a half wall of subway tiles with an almost full wall of textured tiles laid in a herringbone formation.

“The owner was adamant she didn’t want color on the wall, so to keep it interesting in all-white, we went for texture,” she says. “Previously, there had been white tiles, but it looked quite flat. We added the tea towel rail and the shelf. It all helps to balance the two sides of the kitchen.”

The new shelf here is longer than what had been there originally and the owner uses it to store her pots and pans. “She didn’t really need extra storage; that wasn’t part of the brief,” Burton says.

The split doors at this end, mentioned earlier, lead into a small utility area and then into the bathroom.

Flute wall tiles: Topps Tiles