Victorian kitchens were usually all business, with little thought to décor. So how to reinvent a period kitchen today? “The challenge is to see how far one can go to make the kitchen look like it belongs,” says architect Rod Sidley, who, with project architect Julie Phalen, restored a Victorian in Wyoming, Ohio.
But first the architects had to deal with the existing kitchen, an insensitive 1970s addition to the 1880s house, replete with inappropriate windows and other offending details. “The single most important decision was to change the windows to match the rest of the house,” says Sidley. Increasing their height and using traditional double-hung units integrated the addition, while welcoming more natural light.
Gutting the space revealed a pleasant surprise: above a dropped ceiling was one the same height as those in the original part of the house. Removing a few walls completed the spatial transformation to a 25½-by-13-foot space.
Key to the illusion of a Victorian kitchen was the selection of quarter-sawn white-oak cabinetry. “The choice of wood species was made early in the project, so details and styling follow the traditions of building with that wood,” explains the architect. Quarter-sawing makes oak’s characteristic grain more consistent. Doors are made of solid panels, as they would have been originally.
The room has two focal points: one the bay window in the breakfast area with its verdant garden view, the other the Wolf range with its handsome range hood liner. The wall opposite the range includes a built-in sideboard and a Sub-Zero refrigerator/freezer fronted with oak panels.
In Victorian times, storage needs were different from today’s accommodations for multiple “necessities.” The architects’ creative storage ideas include what look like robust posts in two corners of the room. They mirror the depth of the cabinets flanking the range and are reiterated on either side of the sideboard opposite, but actually provide ample, if narrow, storage space. Running all the cabinets up the ceiling, where a handsome oak molding rings the room, also boosts capacity.
Not long after the redo, the owners sold to another couple, who so love the kitchen that they made only one significant change: a cabbage-rose wall covering that provides a suitably Victorian finishing touch.