Modern Designer Kitchen

Designed by Chris VanKlei, crafted by Brian Grabski, the collaborative effort kitchen and living room make up half of this 680 sqft. custom home.

To make the space feel larger, Grabski and VanKlei vaulted the ceiling in the living room and added architectural cubbies in the upper vaulted section for displaying artwork.  The idea was to make the cubbies “a piece of art” in itself.  The cubbies draw your eye upward creating the feeling of a much larger space.  “It doesn’t feel small.”  The kitchen is completely open to the living room.  The break in the ceiling is what defines the two spaces.

The kitchen’s modern waterfall counter tops  double function as an eating space.  Floor to ceiling cabinets along the wall of the kitchen maximize storage space.  A tall vertical linear window is built into the wall of cabinetry.  The “light shaft” adds an interesting element to the design while giving leave to natural sunlight into the kitchen.   Frosted backlit glass panels in the large upper cabinet add a soft ambient mood light to the space.

No detail is overlooked in the kitchen, including the cabinet’s interiors.   Custom glass racks organize and hold stemmed glassware, the cabinet backs are painted an accent color, making the decorative shelves that proudly display the hand made pottery dishes really pop.  “My cabinets look great when I forget to close the doors.”

To utilize the dead space in the corner cabinet, Grabski designed and made a custom wine rack “blind-corner” unit.  When the corner cabinet door is open, a pullout shelving unit, holding additional glasswear, pulls out of the opening and hinges to the side.  Once the glasswear is clear out of the way, a wine rack slides from the dead space into the door opening, revealing Grabski’s wine storage.  Grabski adds that,  “Additional racking is tucked into the far back of the unit for aging your stronger cabernet, the ones that need a few extra years to fully mature.”