Chef's Kitchen Works Hard Yet Stays Pretty
A butler's pantry complete with refrigerator and dishwasher helps a restaurateur contain the mess when cooking and entertaining at home
A professional chef and co-owner of a Colorado-based restaurant group wanted his personal kitchen to be a refuge from the frantic stainless steel ones he works in every day. Now that it has a butler’s pantry to keep the dirty dishes at bay, along with dual marble islands and a walnut bookcase, he feels right at home when cooking for family and friends.
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As a chef, the homeowner is all too familiar with hectic, messy kitchens. When cooking at home for family and friends, he prefers to keep dirty pots and pans out of sight. To that end, Perce designed a “butler’s pantry on steroids” to hold a refrigerator, sink and dishwasher. The walnut bookcase framing the entrance stores serving ware and cookbooks. “We also added a cabinet into the bookshelf with tons of electrical outlets, so the homeowners can discreetly charge all their personal devices,” Perce says.
Closed storage in the butler’s pantry eliminated the need for upper cabinets in the kitchen itself. The islands’ medium-density-fiberboard drawers and cabinets got what Perce describes as an “automotive finish” that included three primer coats and a high gloss finish of Benjamin Moore’s Outrageous Orange.
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On warm evenings, the great room’s glass doors pivot open to a backyard deck, where an outdoor dining table seats up to 14 guests.
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Who lives here: A professional chef and his family
Location: Boulder, Colorado
Designer: Steven Perce of bldg.collective
Having grown up in England, where houses less than 100 years old could be considered “new construction,” the homeowners developed an appreciation for contemporary spaces that highlight traditional details. A beadboard ceiling, steel-framed doors and deep window moldings were added to their recently built home to make it seem older than its years.
A custom 14-foot dining table on one side of a pair of classic marble islands accommodates up to 12 guests. “The two red chairs at the ends of the table were supposed to be a temporary selection, but the homeowners love how the color accentuates the orange cabinets, so they kept them,” designer Steven Perce says.