Stil James

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Cottages & Bungalows

April 30, 2025

This kitchen used to have an office sitting on top

This kitchen used to have an office sitting on top of it.

Meet Fern Hill, in Chester. When we first walked in, the ceilings were 7.5 feet and every wall was plain white drywall. The office upstairs was mostly where the forgotten stuff went to live.

So we took the office. We opened the ceiling up into it and gave the kitchen the height it had been missing all along. Then we added what the house never had, wood beams, shiplap and a hood with some curves to it.

Swipe for the coffee nook, the record shelf and the little wine rack tucked under it, and one really good picture of this kitchen before.

Our clients wanted a kitchen that felt like it had

Our clients wanted a kitchen that felt like it had been there a hundred years. The house hasn’t been.

So we skipped the fake-old stuff. No distressed paint, no beams glued to the ceiling pretending to hold something up. The kitchen itself stays clean and simple, and the age comes from things that wear well on their own: a plaster hood, original trim & hand-painted tile on the fireplace, natural stone on the counters. Then colour does the rest, the blue stain on the oak island, the rust stools, the warm grass cloth wall wrapping the fireplace.

Old soul, new drywall.

Picture who lives here for a second. Green on the

Picture who lives here for a second. Green on the fireplace, cobalt beadboard under toile wallpaper, raspberry pink with a sky blue door frame. You’re probably thinking young family, strong opinions about paint.

Close. It’s a family cottage, built for every generation of the family at once.

A house that has to hold everyone from the oldest to the youngest can’t be fussy, and nobody tiptoes around a yellow @lorancabinetry mudroom. The colour is what makes it feel like the place everybody wants to end up.

Floors still under paper, laundry doors still in bubble wrap. More once it’s done.

Same house, before drywall and after. Swipe for th

Same house, before drywall and after. Swipe for the good part.

Framing is my favourite walk-through on any build. You can finally stand where the bed goes and see what you’ll wake up to, and you can still move a door without anyone needing to sit down first. In the green room, what you wake up to is the ocean. Every morning. Rough.

The round window was a hole in the gable. Now it’s a window seat with pink trim, and it got claimed fast.

Say “all-white kitchen” to most people and you get

Say “all-white kitchen” to most people and you get one of two faces. Bored, or already tired from picturing the cleanup.

This is a couple’s cottage, and the whole point of it is a full house. Grown kids, grandkids, everyone at once. So, along with @waveinteriors, we went white anyway and gave it plenty to hold onto: old beams with the knots still showing, brass, a stone with green running through it, and a banquette covered in flowers because nobody under ten has ever loved a beige cushion.

The half of the island closest to the stools is wood. That’s where the toast and the jam and the elbows go. A mark on wood just looks lived in.

It’s a very white kitchen. It’s also very ready for a four-year-old with toast.

📸 @kimberphotographer

She’d never hired a designer before this kitchen.

She’d never hired a designer before this kitchen.

In the before, the island had a second sink in it and a high chair clipped to the edge, so breakfast shared a counter with the dishes. Swipe and you’ll spot the learning tower parked wherever it fit.

We took the sink out and gave the island one long slab, so the mornings finally have room (especially important when you have two young kids). Loran cabinets built around how this family moves, cream on the wall, green on the island, brass on the pulls.

She lived in it a while. Then called us back for the upstairs.

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