in praise of the galley kitchen

I love my galley kitchen.  My sincere apologies in advance if I offend some of you, but it really is my preferred kitchen layout.  

I recently hosted a party in my home and everyone gravitated to the kitchen.  I have a beautiful open-plan entertaining space that includes a bar area, living room, dining room, and a small sitting area, yet everyone wants to hang out in my tiny galley!  Naturally, the bonus of the galley kitchen is that you can shut it off and divert your guests to the living room/sitting room.

Most of you are probably thinking to yourselves that “duh… that’s why you have an open kitchen, so your guests can talk to you while you are working in the kitchen,” but here comes my biggest point.  I don’t want you in my kitchen.  

If it’s a dinner party {whether I cooked or “ordered-in” extremely well} odds are that my kitchen is an unmitigated disaster.  My primary focus as a hostess is to make sure that my guests are enjoying themselves, not whether or not the take-out container from the moo-shu is properly disposed of, or that the stovetop is wiped down.

 I want to close the doors to the kitchen and behave as a proper hostess, making sure that everyone’s drink is topped off, that there are good conversations going on and that the hors d’ouevres are plentiful (not to mention keeping an eagle eye on the pooch to make sure her tail doesn’t clear the coffee table with one fell swish).

I am not alone.  Marian McEvoy, former editor of Elle Decor and House Beautiful had this to say ::

I do not like an open kitchen. My new one is closed off with a curtain. I don’t want people to watch me. Cooking is very private and cathartic. You’re not there to see me work hard, or freak out if the sauce doesn’t take. Let’s just keep you drinking wine and chatting at the table. I won’t be in the kitchen long. I prepare in advance and have everything in the oven before guests arrive. I just have to pull things out and serve.

In fact, Ms. McEvoy wrote a great piece in praise of the separate kitchen in her column for Domino {RIP}, but as my office is still completely deconstructed, the odds of me finding it are slim to none. {If by chance you have a copy, would you share it with me?  I would be eternally grateful!}

What other benefits are there to the galley kitchen, besides keeping guests out from underfoot?  The layout is a big reason.  Everything is literally at your fingertips, you can’t find a more compact work triangle, my friends.  

Another reason I love it is that you need to be super smart when doing the shopping — buy only what you need because you certainly don’t have room for that Costco sized container of Circus Peanuts {seriously, who eats those things?  Well, I know my Grandfather did, but beside that… who eats those things!?}

Okay.  Stepping off my soap box now.  Please enjoy the below slideshow of some of my favorite galley kitchens! ::

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

What’s your favorite style of kitchen layout?  Why?  Do you eat Circus Peanuts too?

db gives her kitchen a little botox injection

Last week I decided to give my kitchen a little Botox.  Why Botox?  Well, my plans weren't quite the scale that would warrant the moniker "face-lift" - "face-lift" implies general anesthesia, cutting, pulling stitching and a recovery period {i.e. new cabinets, appliances, permits, general contractors, and not being able to use the kitchen for a while.}

I really just needed to "zhuzh" up the kitchen because it really needed some TLC.  So here is the progress in pictures!

SO.... here is what the kitchen looked like when I first purchased the house.  Notice the darker ceiling and beams and the brick red/brown flooring....

kitchen (looking to front door)

shoji screens open to kitchen

One of the first things I did once I closed on the house was paint out the ceilings and beams in Chantilly Lace by Benjamin Moore {Look at this article from Apartment Therapy on the best white paints!}.  I chose a pearl lustre finish so that it would kind of glimmer when light from various fixtures hit it.   I also painted over the red/brown floor tiles with bright white glossy alkyd/enamel floor paint, also from Benjamin Moore.  It immediately brightened everything -- the house already had amazing light, but the white ceilings and floors took it to another level.

before botox -- check out the bright white floor!

before botox -- note the white beams + ceiling

A few months back I took the sliding doors off the cabinets -- I thought they looked a little cheesy and cheap and I have always liked the look of open shelving in the kitchen.  The entire cabinet box was stained mahogany that matched the wood paneling throughout db's abode and it felt really heavy in the small space.

Given my affinity for all things Hermès, it should come as no surprise that I selected an Hermès orange paint for the inside of the upper cabinet boxes.  I figured, if I make my kitchen look like an Hermès box, maybe I'll be more inclined to spend time in there.  As it stands now, my refrigerator looks the way my refrigerator looked in my NYC days -- lots of condiments, a bottle of champagne, a bottle of Lillet, and some string cheese.  The Barefoot Contessa I am not.

Let the fun begin!!

masking the cabinets

definitely my least favorite part of the job

adventures in spray primer

When I decided to start the kitchen botox project, I thought I'd use spray paint -- I thought it would be faster and that I would get a much smoother finish.  Let's just say I wouldn't recommend it.... I have no idea how many brain cells I killed in the process, but I'm sure it was a lot.  I also underestimated the amount of over-spray from the spray can -- my hair turned grey and there was a fine film of primer on my stove top.  Oops.

five cans of primer didn't quite do the trick

i gave myself brain damage for this?

orange, orange, orange, apple!  orange you glad i didn't say orange again?

I cried "Uncle!" after the spray-primer incident and went to Home Depot to get good old fashioned roller-applied primer and paint.  Will became my angel in an orange apron when he showed me Behr's primer and paint in one.  One problem...the color I had my heart set on was Benjamin Moore's Electric Orange.  I used my handy dandy Benjamin Moore Color Capture app for my iPhone {they really do have an app for everything} to get an exact match to my Hermès box, but of course Home Depot has Glidden and Behr {which do not have handy-dandy iPhone apps}.  My angel in an orange apron was able to get the right mix when I gave him the Benjamin Moore color number and I was good to go with my bucket of paint and foam rollers.

coat #1 of 3

the other side of the kitchen

It was a late night full of painting and belting out glam rock ballads, but three+ coats later and I was one step closer to my Hermès box of a kitchen!

almost there!

The botox has been injected, now we just have to wait for the swelling to go down....

" "

" "

et voilà!

I am over the moon with the finished product -- I am far from a professional painter, but I'm pretty proud of myself.  Now I have a great way of displaying my glassware and it feels like a completely different room and all it took was a bucket of paint, a few lost brain cells and badly sung glam rock!

Would You Put a Dining Room Table in Your Kitchen? I Would!

During one of my trips to France,  I noticed that many people had their dining tables in their kitchens -- I'm not talking the typical "eat-in"-style kitchen seen in many homes, but a honest-to-g0d table for eight smack in the middle of the kitchen.

The open-plan design for the kitchen and living area has been popular for a while now, but I personally have never been a fan.  I prefer to have my kitchen separate, but it is true that guests tend to gravitate to the kitchen, so I think the idea of having a dining table in the kitchen is fantastic.  A lot of kitchens have long islands designed for dining, why not trade out the cumbersome island for a beautiful table?  You can even use the table as a work surface while prepping.

Because of the popularity of the open-plan, formal dining rooms are getting used less and less, so why not take your kitchen up a notch and have dinner parties there?  If anything, it would make clearing the table a heck of a lot easier and you could repurpose the never-used formal dining room as a home-office, library, lounge, or whatever you want!

photo: southern accents magazine

photo: channel4.com

photo: cotemaison.fr

photo: tc villas

photo: apartment therapy

photo: apartment therapy

photo: decorpad.com

photo: cotemaison.fr

photo: cotemaison.fr

photo: cotemaison.fr

photo: decorpad.com

photo: cotemaison.fr