A White Shaker Beauty!
One of the most popular requests we receive every day is for a White Shaker kitchen. In our coastal town of Naples, white will always be popular, classic, and timeless while the Shaker door style is simple, elegant, and refreshing. When you have a kitchen in a White Shaker style, you get this:
What a beautiful kitchen remodel! This is a home in the Vineyards we just finished and it is perfect for the couple that lives here. Just to the right of the sink in the above photo is the dishwasher which they chose to have an integrated panel design to continue the clean look and feel of their base cabinetry. This was certainly a positive upgrade!
(Be sure to see the "before" photos at the end of this article.)
The under-cabinet lighting provides tons of useful task lighting over the work areas and the stainless hood they chose is the perfect compliment to the sleek design of the kitchen. Even the slab drawer fronts help to continue the flow to achieve the look of understated elegance. Millennium Cream is the granite used for both the countertops and the backsplash.
Since great rooms are a popular floor plan here in southwest Florida, one issue that required a lot of attention was seamlessly blending the living area with the kitchen space. The Shaker door style "Sagamore" was used again but this time a Cherry wood was used with a Sorrel finish. By changing the color of the cabinetry on this side of the peninula, the color blends perfectly with the homeowner's furnishings. There is hidden storage in the cabinets in front of the barstools and the area to the right proved to be a perfect location for a beverage station - great for entertaining!
With a modest sized kitchen such as this, UltraCraft Frameless Cabinets were selected for this project. What are frameless cabinets? In frameless construction, cabinets do not have a face frame attached to the front of the cabinet box. After they have been installed, all you will see are the flat door and drawer fronts (no hinges or box frame), providing a sleek and simple aesthetic. Frameless cabinets do not have a center stile coming down in the middle of the two cabinet doors either which provides easier access to the items inside, as well as more storage space to work with. Drawers in frameless cabinetry also tend to be larger because of the space saved by not having a face frame attached to the front. What this can mean for small to medium spaces is more storage - and who can't use more storage?
Now for a few "before" photos. From this perspective you can see the soffit has been removed as well as the protruding wall area to the left of the bar and the wall surrounding the refrigerator. By removing the soffit the homeowners were able to have taller upper cabinets which provides more storage. The overall floor plan was not modified but by updating the layout and improving the functional usage of the new cabinets, the homeowners increased storage, improved functionality, and updated the entire feel of their home.
The photo above shows a kitchen desk area on the bottom left corner and this was removed to allow for the addition of a double stacked oven and surrounding cabinetry. Great use of space!
What a difference! When you compare the photos above and below, you notice right away the impact of what a few changes made to this home. Even the change in lighting warmed up the space and now compliments the belongings of the homeowners nicely where the "before" kitchen was really disconnected from the rest of the home.
The new kitchen is everything the homeowners wanted: classic, elegant, and up-to-date. We hope our clients will love their new kitchen for many years to come. This kitchen definitely is a White Shaker Beauty!
