Making Breakfast with McKim, Mead & White

Architecture
February 3, 2015

Good Morning Lacquered Lifers. Talk about loving a set of cabinets. This kitchen is located in a McKim, Mead & White home in Newport, RI. While some of the cabinetry is original, Zuerner Design took great pains to match this original cabinetry and take inspiration from it when expanding the kitchen for the current homeowners. While the overall look of the kitchen is not my taste, there are a number of details which have caught my eye and are worth paying attention to. Most importantly, the upper cabinets with their sliding paned doors. Sliding. So traditional, and yet in a different surrounding the concept is so modern. The legs of this farm sink. While it is not something I would ever think to do, I love the look of the exposed plumbing underneath and the turned legs make the sink feel like a piece of furniture. Back to the cabinetry, my main focus in this room, notice that those cabinets with the sliding glass doors are double sided. On one side the cabinet faces the kitchen, and on the other, the butler’s pantry, which allows the owner to access the china, crystal, etc. from both the kitchen and the butler’s pantry. Genius. I cannot wait for an opportunity to use this idea in the future.
Finally, I have for a very long time had a love affair with cabinetry that continues all the way to the floor. While it may be less practical than having the recessed kick plate or shoe mold at the bottom, I think it makes the cabinetry somehow look more finished, more furniture like.

For more photos of this kitchen visit zuernerdesign.com

Flash Back Friday Favorites: Hadley in New Jersey

Architecture
January 23, 2015

Good Morning Lacquered Lifers! Another Flash Back Friday Favorite on the blog today … you know, those rooms or those homes or those scenes that despite the number of years that have passed since you first laid eyes on them still continue to inspire you? Nancy Pyne’s 1820s Colonial in New Jersey, as decorated by Albert Hadley. One of my all time favorites. Every time I look at these rooms, I see something else that inspires me. Happy Friday. photos via House Beautiful

Throwback Thursday: Studio Daze

Architecture
January 22, 2015

Good Morning Lacquered Lifers. Today I thought I would embrace the concept of Throwback Thursday and share some photos of my Philadelphia studio apartment that I lived in from 2009-2011 while I attended graduate school. The studio was 12′ x 24′, and while that may seem small, it fit me just perfectly. Sure I was hanging clothes in a closet in the tiny kitchen that only had a half fridge and two burner stove (no oven), but there was room for my bed, my desk, some great ikea club chairs, and I even through four person dinner parties in that apartment with a little drop leaf table I would pull off the wall and open up in the middle of the room. And the location? Perfect. I was one block from Rittenhouse Square. Built at the turn of the 20th century as a single family home, this Philadelphia row house between 20th and 21st Streets was once quite grand. However, by the time I got there, the home was broken up into small studio and one bedroom apartments that weren’t in the best shape … Here is a photo of the building from the exterior. See the dormer windows on the fourth floor? That’s my apartment. Even though the building no longer looked the way it had 100 years prior, there was still evidence of its past in some of the architectural details on the facade. Everything in that apartment was bought on a shoestring budget and became a DIY project, or was something I inherited, or was a gift from my parents. And some of these pieces are still a part of my life here in Charleston. Those silver tables are now coral and live on the piazza. My teeny tiny kitchen. And to think that I made dinner parties worth of dinners in that space! All on the stovetop b/c I had no oven. I painted the walls Benjamin Moore Caribbean Blue Water in high gloss which made a teeny space feel more like a jewel box than a closet. And the walls of the main room were Benjamin Moore Bird’s Egg. I loved that little studio. With all the studying and work I was doing, I probably spent more time in that apartment in Philadelphia than both of my NYC apartments combined. It seems like only yesterday, but I took these photos six years ago. Whoa. Happy Throwback Thursday.