Pretty in Pink

A black-and-white tempered sheet vinyl floor, surrounded by white walls and a white subway tile backsplash, makes sure the pink cabinets remain the star of the show.

Maggie Smith had been talking with her husband, Scott, about renovating the kitchen of their Exeter home for two years, until one day, Scott said, “Let’s just go for it.”

“It was probably like, ‘Stop talking about it and do it,’” she says now, laughing.

A smaller-than-standard-size refrigerator and a microwave were installed at cabinet depth, creating additional counter space and providing a streamlined look.

The kitchen in the 1962 ranch house had a gray laminate floor, white cabinets and stood out like a sore thumb in a house with hardwood floors, built-in bookcases and original archways. “The rest of the house had a warm tone to it; it felt like my grandmother’s house,” Smith says. “But the kitchen looked cold. It lacked any personality.”

One would never say that today, thanks to what Maggie and Scott call their “pink kitchen.” Now, Maggie sits at the dining room table and looks through two new archways past a pantry/bar into a kitchen that pops with color. With pink cabinets, white quartz countertops, white walls, a white subway-style backsplash and a black-and-white tempered sheet vinyl floor, the kitchen is a show-stopper.

“They wanted to keep the overall style in line with the age of the house, but with their own fun twist on it,” says Sarena Preve, a designer at KRB Kitchen + Bath Design Center, which handled the entire project.

Finding the right shade of pink came through trial and error. Maggie didn’t want hot pink, cotton candy pink or any pink that was too flashy. So, she painted different shades of pink on the old cabinets to get a sense of how it would look before deciding on a pale pink with a touch of dustiness. “It was a challenging color to nail down,” she said. “But I wanted a more sophisticated pink.”

The view from the dining room into the kitchen through a new archway is a favorite of the homeowner.

Another challenge to the renovation was working with a small footprint. The house is around 1,200 square feet, and the new kitchen would remain 9-by-13 feet. Clearly, space was at a premium. Thus, a smaller-than-standard-size refrigerator, at 30 inches wide, was selected and installed at cabinet depth, as was the microwave. “It makes everything streamlined, so it feels bigger,” Maggie says. “And the smaller refrigerator allowed us to gain counter space.”

Another space saver is a walnut knife holder attached to the wall. Meanwhile, cabinets were hung high, and accessory drawers were placed inside the cabinets for additional storage. “We didn’t want to get too ornate with the cabinetry,” Preve said. “We wanted to keep it simple and clean, and to focus on function.”

The design of the pantry was kept subdued, but a punch of color was added to keep that playfulness and retro feeling going.

Even the light fixtures in the kitchen and pantry/bar were chosen carefully. “It’s not a style you would see in an everyday kitchen,” Preve says. “They have a retro-schoolhouse look.”

It was a challenging color to nail down. But I wanted a more sophisticated pink.

Designing the 5-by-9½-foot pantry also required ingenuity. Three windows were removed from the dining room, two were re-centered and a new dining room wall was built to create the walkthrough pantry. The door into the kitchen was then replaced by an archway. “The archway was another whimsical twist on the direction they wanted to go in the kitchen,” Preve says. She took great care to design a pantry/bar that would not steal the spotlight from the kitchen. “We kept it subdued, but then added a punch of color to the backsplash to keep that playfulness and retro feeling going.”

Now, the kitchen that Maggie once called “awful” has the same vintage vibe as the remainder of the house. “Every day I walk in there is so exciting,” she says. “It’s such a fun kitchen. People love it. It’s so cool.”

PROJECT TEAM
KRB Kitchen + Bath Design Center
603-772-3486 • krbcompany.com