Contemporary Kitchen Design in Silver Spring, Maryland

Photography by Bob Narod

The existing kitchen in this project was all wrong for the space. It was jammed in the far corner where the breakfast table is now and a run of cabinets were on the left wall. The table was placed where the box bay is now. With those high cathedral ceilings, the entire existing space was totally out of proportion. We decided that the best way to rearrange the kitchen was to move it to the center of the room, make a larger window with a box bay and to move the table at the end of the kitchen. The kitchen was not quite wide enough for the island, so, by putting in the box bay, it allowed us to push the cabinetry into that space giving just enough room for the island. In order to get enough wall cabinets, we placed the downdraft cooktop in front of the large window, this way, we could run the wall cabinets right over the main sink (if the cooktop was on that wall, we’d have to raise the cabinets up too high). Since getting to the cooktop from the main sink was blocked by the island, the solution to this was to place a smaller prep sink on the island near the cooktop. On the main sink wall, we needed to place the refrigerator, but, a large 36″ one would have taken up too much space. To resolve this, we used a 27″ wide Sub Zero all refrigerator and then on the opposite side, we put under counter Sub Zero freezer drawers. In order to get pantry space, we placed a pantry above the freezer drawers which matched in appearance the all refrigerator. To eliminate that awkward space above the wall cabinet which occurs because of the cathedral ceilings, we put laminated glass wall cabinets there with angled backs which raised the cabinet height to be more in proportion with the high ceilings. The lighting inside these cabinets helps to create a nice ambiance. For the general space, we widened the doorway going into the kitchen from the foyer and filled in part of the cathedral ceilings in both the foyer and the kitchen which made the kitchen space more open, yet, more in proportion. Lighting had to be dealt with since recessed lights would have been fairly ineffective, so, we used cable lighting to span the large ceiling spaces.