Santa Fe, New Mexico

An old Spanish house in Santa Fe, and a kitchen that had to hold two traditions at once. The building is unmistakably of its place, and the brief was to bring French charm into it without the result reading as fancy dress. The first decision was structural. We removed the wall between the kitchen and the family room to make one generous space, which meant introducing a beam to carry the load. That beam is visible in the photographs, and it was always going to be. Concealing structure in a house of this character would have been the wrong instinct entirely. It is far better for the beam to be seen and understood as the reason the room is the shape it is.

Taking out a wall always leaves its mark on the floor, and that is where these projects are usually let down. We sourced matching bricks so the floor reads as one continuous surface, with no line to tell you where the old kitchen ended. The French elements were then chosen with real care. An imported range gives the room its center of gravity, cabinets were painted in custom mixed colors rather than anything from a standard chart, and a bowed copper sink adds warmth and patina. The detail I like most is the custom hood, which uses an old beam for its apron. It brings genuine age into a kitchen that is otherwise entirely new, and age of that kind cannot be manufactured or antiqued convincingly. It is the same question I ask of every kitchen I take on in Chapin and around Lake Murray.