Country Kitchen (continued)
This high-performance kitchen is designed to accommodate a crowd
In the plan, the kitchen and adjoining pantry occupy one end of the waterside house. Wide doorways open the kitchen to the dining and living rooms. |
“For protection from fire, the traditional Southern kitchen with its wood-burning stove was always kept separate from the main house,” Ferguson explains. In a nod to that tradition, he and the Treeses placed their twostory, 300-square-foot kitchen at one end of the structure, with the rest of the house attached to it. Once they had the design ideas roughed out, their sketches were turned over to Christian Trask, of Distant Island Company in Beaufort, who added a few creative touches before producing the working plans.
An antique Parisian butcher-block that Jan treasured became the inspiration for at least one of the details that ultimately appeared in her kitchen. Its tapered legs and ball feet were repeated on the 558-foot work island where Jan would prepare meals and also preside over her cooking classes. Cabinets were custom made by the Meridian Company in a simple Shaker style. “The carcasses are poplar, and the doors are mahogany,” says the designer. “Glass-fronted wall cabinets were included so that all of their contents would be visually accessible.”
The flooring in the room is unique. It’s structural flooring salvaged from an old Massachusetts mill that was being torn down. As Ferguson points out, “Each fir plank is four inches thick. That’s why there are no floor joists in this house. It’s built over steel I-beams. And the ceiling joists you see in the kitchen are lengths of fir flooring as well. The finish is natural, the wood just coated with polyurethane.”
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