Open wide
An innovative kitchen in a renovated Weston home goes from galley to glorious.
When Carey and Craig Best, a busy couple with three young children, remodeled their contemporary Weston home, they wanted to replace the oak cabinets and Formica countertops of their isolating galley kitchen with something more open-plan. What architect David Eisen of Abacus Architects + Planners in Boston designed for them was a room with abundant natural light that’s open on two sides and nestled into a space flowing from family room to kitchen to dining and living rooms. “The goal was to define the areas to feel like separate rooms, but to be sure that they weren’t cut off from the surrounding spaces,” says Eisen.
Eisen retained the original kitchen’s general layout but replaced the drywall and plaster with two parallel, almost sculptural 4-foot-thick walls. Into the wall facing the dining room, Eisen nestled a china cabinet with frosted-glass doors and two side-by-side drawers for table linens. The other wall, on the family-room side, houses a large television and audio equipment. On the butt ends are shelves for cookbooks as well as cubbies for wine, a liquor cabinet, a beverage fridge, and space for the children’s art supplies. Glass cabinets at eye level provide storage and a sense of roominess. Eisen likens the use of space to a ship’s. “It’s a tight space in which we make the most of what we’ve got,” he says.
The nautical analogy doesn’t stop there. Not only is this a highly organized kitchen, it is also a carefully crafted one. Eisen and architect Katy Flammia, principle of THEREdesign, also in Boston, who worked on the home’s interior finishes, made strategic decisions regarding materials that would visually define the plan’s separate spaces. For example, the kitchen and dining room ceilings are paneled in the same maple as the kitchen cabinetry; these panels extend slightly into the family room. The porcelain tile that covers the floors of the kitchen and family room skirts the edge of the dining room. These elements “break out” of the kitchen, says Eisen, linking the rooms on either side to it.
The result? A room that’s “fluid, even when everyone’s home and the kids have their friends over or we’re entertaining,” says Carey Best. Just what they wanted.
Marni Elyse Katz blogs about design at stylecarrot.com. Send comments to magazine@globe.com. 
