Journal
As bespoke kitchen design commissions go, this project has been a wonderful experience and is due for installation during the late Summer / early Autumn (2023).
Our client had recently purchased this magnificent Grade II listed Georgian home near Bath which, apart from the kitchen, had largely been sympathetically renovated by previous owners.
The Guild Anderson design team was introduced to the client by the country house Interior Designer Lucy Cunningham who had been commissioned to design the interiors of this fabulous house. We were also introduced by the client’s property advisors at Middleton Advisors.
The kitchen pantry with fridge and freezer flanking a glazed partition.
The right hand pantry door is hinged. The left door is fixed to allow more storage behind it.
In some sense this kitchen design was relatively straightforward in that the existing niches could not be adjusted or interfered with. The extraction ducting was already located on the back wall, with water and drainage on the remaining wall.
With no appetite by the client (or us!) for major building intervention, the layout of the room needed little change.
Our job was simply to remove the unsympathetic kitchen which was installed by the previous owner, and to design a more harmonious and understated space in keeping with a Georgian country house.
Our brief from the client was to maintain a simple and understated design approach. The main kitchen is relatively light on joinery, which in most cases is how we like to keep it.
We had hoped to dig into the one area of flat wall to install an inset glazed dresser, but the builders, Stonewood, quickly discovered this wall was part of the original exterior of the house and was important to the structural integrity of the building. We quickly backed off the idea! A shelf at high level is now in its place.
We were fortunate the kitchen space is supported by what will be a fabulous glazed pantry, so this additional dresser was not essential.
FINISHES
The interior of the bespoke pantry is fully lined in hand painted tongue and groove panelling. The client chose Carrara marble for the pantry worktops, a marble from Italy which was commonly used in English country houses during the Georgian period.
For the main kitchen a Quartz version of Carrara was chosen for the oven and sink run, with an antiqued black granite for the cook’s table to butt up against the aged sycamore worktop.
The principal joinery will be hand painted in Paint and Paper Library Cashmere II with the oak cook’s table being aged and then French polished by hand. The ironmongery throughout will be aged brass.
The Lacanche range oven is in Portugese Blue.
