Timberlake, Chapin, South Carolina

This kitchen is in Chapin, five minutes from my own front door, and it is a useful example of what a gut renovation is actually for. We took the room back to nothing. New cabinetry, new pantry, new lighting, new window treatments, a custom hood. Everything except the floor.

The floor stayed, and that single decision is the reason the room works. It had age in it, the kind of worn and settled quality that cannot be bought or specified or ordered in. Laying new flooring would have given us a kitchen that looked finished on the day it was photographed and generic within a year. Keeping it gave us a kitchen with an old world feeling from the first morning, and it meant every other choice in the room had something honest to answer to.

The custom cabinetry was designed around what remained rather than imposed upon it. Finishes were selected against the tone of the existing floor, and proportions were set to the room as we found it. The custom hood anchors the range wall and does the work a focal point should do, which is to give the eye somewhere to rest before it takes in everything else.

The pantry was planned for how this family actually cooks. New banquette cushions and window treatments soften a room that is otherwise full of hard surfaces, and the new light fixtures were chosen to be seen rather than merely to illuminate.

The project ran five to six months. Knowing what to keep is the hardest part of a renovation and the part that most often gets skipped, and it is where I spend the most time on every kitchen I take on in Chapin and around Lake Murray.