The kitchen as we were packing up, including the 1940s O'Keefe & Merritt range we sold to a neighbor. At right is the short, useless peninsula that we removed to open up the table end of the kichen and create one continuous run of counter along the west wall.
This door was replaced by a window and the free-standing bookcase with the custom-built shallow black cabinet with steel and butcher block bookcase above.
We took the wall between kitchen and dining room down to half-height.
The cabinets to the right of the frig replaced a hot-water heater closet (we put in an on-demand unit elsewhere). Counters here are about 30 inches deep.
The counters are Beleza soapstone.
Sills were made from soapstone tiles.
A shallow closet was gutted and rebuilt as a floor to ceiling pantry, with an opening for the microwave.
Masonite painted with chalkboard paint was bolted to the wall behind the kitchen table. The bulletin board covers the electrical panel.
This is what replaced the door and free-standing bookcase.
Corners of butcher block shelves were routed out so that steel angle iron would sit flush when the bookcase was bolted together.
The Meridian pendant from the Sundance catalog on-line
Because of the large window at the north end of the kitchen the cabinet at the end of the run needed to be shallower than the standard IKEA base unit so our carpenter built this ebony-stained cabinet to fit the space.
The section of counter over the cart and shallow black cabinet is IKEA butcher block (one slab of soapstone covered everything but this area). We don't do a lot of prep in this area so the seam between soapstone and butcher block hasn't been a problem. We finished the IKEA butcher block with about 8 coats of pure tung oil. The radius of the curve in the butcher block is the same as the radius of the corners of our big new sink.
We didn't have room for an island but liked the idea of cart that could be stored under the counter and used as either an additional worksurface (the casters have brakes) or as a serving cart. This area where the counter needed to narrow over the shallow black cabinet was the perfect spot. We bought steel angle iron from a local welding shop, wirebrushed it and sealed with spray poly. Our carpenter routed out the corners of pieces of IKEA butcher block so the metal would sit flush when it was bolted together.
The backsplash is 3x6 subways from Sonoma Tileworks, Star series, color Trellis Green; the 1x2 accent tile is also from Sonoma, Tantrum in Tazo. We chose the accent tiles because the color is the same as the green inclusions in the soapstone. Grout is light gray.
We used pulls on all the doors and drawers, 4-inch on doors and 6-inch on drawers. The pulls are the Aubrey style from Restoration Hardware in brushed nickel.
The passthrough top was made of 1/2-inch-thick plate steel from an architectural metal shop. We wirebrushed the raw steel and sealed it with spray polyurethane before it was mounted on the pony wall.
