Kitchen Design
Kitchen of the Week
Remodeled Galley Kitchen With Warm Contemporary Style
A sleek and sophisticated makeover suits this family’s waterfront lifestyle on Vancouver Island
As this young family started to grow, it moved from a compact condo in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, into a house on Vancouver Island. The 1960s house had its charms, but a renovation and addition completed 25 years ago had left it disjointed and not to the couple’s taste. So they hired interior designer Rachelle Gervais to strip the house down to the studs and give it a cohesive look that suited their style. “They like things minimalist and contemporary. We wanted the house to be simple yet sophisticated,” Gervais says. In the kitchen, this meant sticking to a simple material palette that mixed white and wood. “They were used to small-space living, so storage was also a priority.”
The French doors provide an expansive view of the water. The dining area is located in front of them at the left.
The island measures 9 feet, 8 inches by 5 feet. Gervais packed it with function and storage. The work side of the island has an undermount sink, dishwasher, microwave drawer and storage that includes deep drawers for pots and pans. On the opposite side, all of the panels are touch-latch cabinets, for things the family doesn’t need on a daily basis. The end that faces the French doors has a bank of drawers, and the opposite end has a cabinet for large items like stockpots.
Hire a kitchen remodeler
The island measures 9 feet, 8 inches by 5 feet. Gervais packed it with function and storage. The work side of the island has an undermount sink, dishwasher, microwave drawer and storage that includes deep drawers for pots and pans. On the opposite side, all of the panels are touch-latch cabinets, for things the family doesn’t need on a daily basis. The end that faces the French doors has a bank of drawers, and the opposite end has a cabinet for large items like stockpots.
Hire a kitchen remodeler
Gervais assessed the existing cabinets to see if they could be reused, but they hadn’t held up well. “They were melamine and the quality of the boxes was not good; they were worn out and they had swelled,” she says. She replaced them with new birch ply cabinets, which she knew would last a long time.
“The sightlines in the kitchen were very important, because you walk in the door and it’s the first thing you see before you look past it to the water views,” Gervais says. “There wasn’t enough room for a decorative range hood, and that wasn’t their aesthetic anyway — we wanted to create a view that wasn’t too ‘kitchen-y.’ ” Honoring her clients’ penchant for minimalism, she kept the lines as clean as possible, hiding the range hood behind cabinet doors for a seamless look.
“The sightlines in the kitchen were very important, because you walk in the door and it’s the first thing you see before you look past it to the water views,” Gervais says. “There wasn’t enough room for a decorative range hood, and that wasn’t their aesthetic anyway — we wanted to create a view that wasn’t too ‘kitchen-y.’ ” Honoring her clients’ penchant for minimalism, she kept the lines as clean as possible, hiding the range hood behind cabinet doors for a seamless look.
“My clients love to cook and they wanted a gas range. This required a higher distance between the vent and the cooktop than the standard distance between counters and upper cabinets,” Gervais says. In order to keep one clean line along the bottom of the upper cabinets and hood, she hung the cabinets at this higher-than-standard height.
Creating that nice clean line meant sacrificing cabinet space. So Gervais designed open boxes to hang beneath the upper cabinets to provide additional storage for the family’s everyday dishes. They also bring the same smoke-tone white oak used on the island base up into this focal-point area. Task lighting is built into the bottoms of the boxes to illuminate the countertops.
Hire a cabinet pro
Creating that nice clean line meant sacrificing cabinet space. So Gervais designed open boxes to hang beneath the upper cabinets to provide additional storage for the family’s everyday dishes. They also bring the same smoke-tone white oak used on the island base up into this focal-point area. Task lighting is built into the bottoms of the boxes to illuminate the countertops.
Hire a cabinet pro
The countertops and backsplash are durable quartz with marble-like veining. Extending the material from the counter up the wall helped maintain the minimalist aesthetic.
“I planned the window bench with their toddler in mind as a way they could interact with him when they were in the kitchen,” the designer says. “It’s become his little nook and he uses it every day.”
Gervais also had storage maximization in mind when she designed the bench. Its large drawers have room for textiles, toys and books. And she used the same materials she used on the rest of the kitchen cabinetry for a cohesive look: smoke-tone white oak for the bench and white-painted birch for the drawers.
Find a local interior designer on Houzz
Gervais also had storage maximization in mind when she designed the bench. Its large drawers have room for textiles, toys and books. And she used the same materials she used on the rest of the kitchen cabinetry for a cohesive look: smoke-tone white oak for the bench and white-painted birch for the drawers.
Find a local interior designer on Houzz
The faucet and cabinet hardware have matte black finishes.
The expansive row of French doors and an adjacent window create a light-filled dining area with water views. Her clients, who appreciate the look of midcentury modern furniture and walnut, already had this dining set, which can be extended for larger gatherings. It turned out to be a perfect fit for the space.
This is the view of the living room from the work side of the island. Gervais mimicked the kitchen cabinetry with a set of built-ins: painted birch cabinetry with smoke-tone white oak accents, along with open boxes. The cabinets are recessed and allow the minimalists to keep things organized and stashed away. The white oak trim continues around the new clean-lined surround for the existing wood stove. The cabinet on the right conceals the TV — it has bifold doors that tuck into the sides of the cabinet, and the TV swings out on an arm.
Floor plan. Here’s the plan of the first floor. The French doors are at the center top.
Takeaways
More on Houzz
Read more kitchen stories
Browse kitchen photos
Hire a kitchen remodeler
Shop for kitchen products
Takeaways
- Repeat a material palette throughout a house for a cohesive look, particularly in rooms that are open to one another.
- Tell your designer upfront about existing elements you want to retain — in this house, it was the original Douglas fir trim. This will inform the material palette from the beginning.
- If you’re considering reusing any parts of existing cabinets, have a pro thoroughly assess their quality. And be prepared to face reality regarding how much longer they can last.
- Maximize a kitchen island’s storage capacity by looking at the potential of all four sides. Also consider the spaces they face — perhaps there’s room to store dog food by the dog’s bowls, or space for colorful cookbooks on the side that faces an eat-in area.
More on Houzz
Read more kitchen stories
Browse kitchen photos
Hire a kitchen remodeler
Shop for kitchen products
Kitchen at a Glance
Who lives here: A couple and their toddler
Location: Vancouver Island, British Columbia
Size: 365 square feet (34 square meters)
Designer: Rachelle Gervais of RG Design Studio
Contractor: Westmark Construction
Gervais quickly got a sense of her clients’ style by asking the right questions. “I used natural inspiration, a mix of warm and cool tones and added matte black for contrast,” she says. She repeated the material palette she came up with for the kitchen throughout the house: white oak with a smoke-tone finish, cabinetry painted white, quartz with marble-like veining and matte black accents.
While this was a full renovation, the layout for the kitchen, dining and living areas remained the same. The kitchen is galley-style, open to the living room and dining area. The large window over the built-in bench overlooks the Salish Sea.
The home’s original Douglas fir window and door trim was in good shape and the homeowners wanted to keep it. “The fir trim has a warm reddish finish, so I chose white oak with a smoke-tone stain to cool it down,” Gervais says. The new flooring is wide-plank, wire-brushed white oak. “This flooring has warm and cool tones, so it bridges the warm and cool-tone woods,” she says.
Browse counter stools in the Houzz Shop