Lilyville

Lilyville Kitchen Renovation

TRUE SW10 Style Kitchen in Hague Blue and Worsted | Arabescato Marble Worktop and Splashback | Smoked Bronze Handles

Our brief for the kitchen and dining area of this London terrace home – with contemporary side return and rear extension – was to create a kitchen for a family that would fit happily into the architecture as it crossed time zones – from its Victorian origins to the present day.

Traditional in-frame wooden cabinetry, finished in Victorian era-appropriate colours (blue tones, once upon a time, painted into pantries as a fly deterrent), and working surfaces that any pastry cook would be happy to endorse (marble the cool choice for those who understand that cold hands and a warm heart are the prerequisites for handling dough, working chocolate, and pulling sugar) – provide links with traditional kitchens of back-in-the-day.

A bridge to the present comes via subtle industrial stylings in the furniture, materials that are used in new ways – copper transitioning from pans to taps, wooden table tops moving from scrubbed pine to a (literally and figuratively) elevated island in white-oiled Brasilia wood that serves, among other uses, as casual dining space – and with contemporary accommodations for cutting edge appliances and modern day rituals and habits – including where best to plug in the electrical devices.

Base and back layers are anchored by the depth of their materiality and tonality, while light is amplified in all the areas where the architecture enables it to shine.

A seamless microcement floor further grounds the project in the present – a beautiful, flexible, contemporary material that reflects the emergence of an industrially focused past.

Material Choices

Marble as working and Decorative Surface

‘Arabescato’ marble, named for its intricate arabesque-adjacent patterning, is employed here as both working and decorative surface. The long back-splash benefits from a centralised join that has been ‘book-matched’, so that the markings ‘reflect’ each other directionally. With a natural stone, the markings are always uniquely ‘simpatico’ rather than absolutely ‘symmetrical’.

A ‘waterfall’ edge to the marble countertop is observed from the garden side, and mimicked – to create symmetry – with a matching narrow edge that runs to the floor at the opposite end.

Furniture

Traditional, bespoke, in-frame furniture is differentiated by colour and area and accessorised with co-ordinating knobs and handles.

Exposed butt hinges are a feature of the traditional joinery techniques used to create cupboard doors that open to reveal dedicated storage spaces – including a pantry and a coat cupboard.