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Northern Liberties Kitchen Renovation
Client: Hale Allen & Alexa Firat
Location: Northern Liberties, Philadelphia
Project Manager: Jason Pemberton
The countertop, glass doors, cabinet doors, drawers, pantry pullout and shelving in this kitchen were built from pine, ash and oak salvaged from construction sites across Philadelphia. In other words, all the material used to build the kitchen would have, at best, ended up on a barge heading out to sea, where it would be dumped into the ocean.
Instead we used it to build a kitchen. With the help of Hale's attuned eye (he's a landscape architect) we came up with a design that would increase storage space for Hale, Alexa, and their daughter Alba, as well as create the galley feel they were going for. Beneath the breakfast bar we built a heavy-duty pullout for recycling, and installed two pantry pullouts (in photo) to ensure ample room for Alexa's cooking ingredients (the hardest aspect of building this kitchen for Hale was the eating out part.)
The glass cabinets we built using an existing cabinet in the kitchen as a model. In a sense much of the kitchen was based off this smaller free-hanging cabinet, while we also incorporated Hale's simpler Newfoundland aesthetic into the final design. Stepping back from this kitchen, it never ceases to blow us away how all this material had a date scheduled with nothingness. Although the work it took to de-nail, joint, plane, and rip down this wood was tremendous, the end product made it worth the effort. |
