Photo by Thomas Boyd, The Oregonian
Ellen and Craig Nichols lived in their Southwest Portland home for just about one year before throwing in the towel.
The kitchen towel.
The awkwardly designed kitchen in their 1928 house was just not going to work for the two avid cooks with busy lives and five adult children who crowd that kitchen during holiday and family dinners.
Ellen craved improved functionality, increased storage and perhaps a way that she and Craig could both be cooking without hip-checking each other out of the way at the sink.
She wanted to do away with clutter and with counters clotted with appliances and utensils.
The Nicholses enlisted the expertise of kitchen designer Robin Fisher, who saw some immediate issues.
The somewhat over-engineered kitchen’s cabinetry and countertops were angled in a failed attempt at using space efficiently. Although Robin loved the mahogany-clad custom cabinets, this layout, she says, really sucked up space.
Pretty or not, Ellen says, there was exactly one cabinet that could hold a dinner plate, some of the hinges were broken and the overhead cabinets proved unreachable without a step stool.
Add to that the narrow floor plan, four doorways into the room, a chimney running up one wall, no desire to move walls and the age of the Council Crest house, and Robin’s challenges were clear.
Photo by Thomas Boyd, The Oregonian
After playing around with various options, Robin zeroed in on the wall that held the refrigerator, chimney and an awkward wrapped counter attached to another angled counter — all with upper cabinets attached.
While there was actually quite a bit of space there, it was just not used correctly.
“One thing that really made it all start happening was when Robin came up with the idea of pulling the whole wall forward, instead of wrapping around the chimney,” Ellen says of the newly configured beverage/baking area that contains a second sink, a convection oven, appliance garage and storage galore.
Instead of being stymied by the odd corner ruled by an old 2-by-2-foot chimney (it now holds ductwork) and a refrigerator pushed back into the far corner, Robin repositioned the back wall in front of the chimney, hiding it and creating a long, straight run for counters and cabinets.
That left enough space for traffic in front of the cabinets, plus empty space behind the new wall along either side of the chimney, which became a bookcase on one side and an unseen laundry chute from upstairs to the basement on the other.
“There’s so much stuff going on behind here,” Robin says, her hand on the drywall that hides the chimney. “It really is a trompe l’oeil.”
The change, however, meant finding a new home for the refrigerator, which had been too far from the sink and stove to begin with. Slapping it on the wall across from the sink, which was being moved over to create more counter space, left it hanging out by itself. Robin decided a cabinet could cozy up to the refrigerator and anchor the corner. She designed the cabinet with glass doors and turned it to face the dining room doorway to show off Ellen’s colorful dinnerware.
Robin and Ellen pretty much credit each other for the project’s success. But Robin says Ellen’s openness to changes and willingness to listen turned problems into solutions and made the project one of her favorite in the 24 years she’s been a designer.
For instance, the first exhaust hood over the Wolf range did not work out well — and that’s putting it mildly.
When the carpenters put in the square hood clad to match the cabinetry, Ellen thought it was ugly. The carpenters readily agreed and suggested calling Robin.
When Robin walked in and saw what she called a “perfect toy box turned upside down,” she described its look using more pungent adjectives.
“It was horrible,” she says, laughing.
But that mistake led to a gorgeous change: a sleek, copper hood, which led to bringing other copper elements into play.
“Not all clients can handle these evolutions,” Robin says. “But that made it fun. We were able to say, ‘Well, that just didn’t work. Let’s change it.’ This project ended up becoming better for the mistakes.”
“It did,” Ellen agrees.
The warm, sienna-colored walls, mahogany trim matched to the home’s original woodwork, and the brown-and-beige checkerboard Marmoleum flooring keep the updated kitchen in check with the age of the house while adding a layer of beauty that Ellen didn’t expect. She says she wasn’t remodeling just to make the room look pretty; she was doing it for functionality.
But she remembers feeling surprised when all was said and done. “Wow,” she thought, “it’s stunning, too.”
