How to cook up a professional grade kitchen

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In a recent House Beautiful article, a newly-built gem in Michigan is featured due to its scullery-inspired kitchen. This East Grand Rapids home is for the true chef and has no-nonsense accents, like overscale Circa Lighting brass pendants and acres of simple white subway tiles (with charcoal grout to hide grease stains!). The result: a kitchen as good-looking as it is hard-working.

If you are interested in creating your very own professional grade kitchen, here are the 7 ingredients the experts at House Beautiful suggest you really focus on…

  1. Organization
    Create a place for everything. To improve workflow, position flatware drawers next to the dishwashers, spice drawers beside the range and cutting boards in a divided drawer within the island.
  1. Surfaces
    Deploying the luxe material strategically, use a walnut island with a 2 ½ inch-thick slab of Calacatta marble‚ then used heat-resistant, tough-wearing Hastia quartzite for the perimeter counters. A natural stone quarried just like marble, quartzite is “almost immortal.”
  1. Sinks
    Never to match everything because it can get boring. When it came to selecting the kitchen’s sinks, consider a traditional English farmhouse double-bowl style from Rohl and a French-influenced hammered-metal prep sink from Waterworks.
  1. Proportions
    Create a work area that’s scaled for meal prep, without the need to run laps. Bringing everything in closer is not only cozier, it also makes cooking, cleaning and grocery unpacking a lot less aerobic.
  1. Cabinets
    To break up what could have quickly become a monotonous wall of solid white cabinets, Zaveloff commissioned a British company to craft wire-mesh door inserts overlaid with a metal diamond pattern. Unlike transparent glass doors that show everything (so shelves have to constantly be neat), the haziness of these custom inserts adds a little mystery to the contents of the cabinets.
  1. Mood Lighting
    The clients went gaga for Waterworks’ utilitarian Watt sconces, which are modeled on telephone-pole insulator covers, but Zaveloff was unsure of where to mount them. Rather than nixing the fixtures, the designer had tiled columns constructed next to each window and installed the sconces there. At night, the family switches them on as a low-light alternative to the brighter overheads.
  1. Fast Access
    A built-in stove-side niche puts everyday seasonings within arm’s reach, while a pot rack mounted above the La Cornue range keeps well-used copper cookware where the action is.