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Before Nicole Arruda, the creative behind Nicole Alexandra Design Studio, could get her hands on this New Providence, New Jersey, kitchen renovation, she called a pro organizer for backup. “I saw mugs and K-Cups and coffee beans on the counter. I was like, ‘We need a home for that,’” recalls Arruda. (Her clients were expecting their first baby at the time, so they got a hall pass for having a lot of stuff.)
Right away, the designer could see the real problems: The fridge was in an awkward location, the cabinets weren’t maximizing storage, and the peninsula cut off the area from the adjacent living room. Not to mention, the powder room around the corner was dated and narrow with a way-too-long shower in the middle of it. Consolidating things allowed Arruda to step back in with a clear mind.
Don’t Let the (Fridge) Door Hit You on the Way Out
The refrigerator’s former placement goes beyond bad feng shui: When the designer’s clients would open the appliance’s door, they’d end up blocking the entry to the dining room. Arruda’s first major layout change was to shift the newly paneled fridge to the opposite wall, closest to the living room.
In the process, Arruda nixed the peninsula and had her contractors build a narrow 28-inch-wide island. “They were like, ‘No way are you going to fit it.’ I said, ‘Yes we will!’” she recalls. On the solid side of the structure, closest to the stove, she added a nook for the microwave. The rest of the island is open on the bottom, allowing just enough room to tuck away four stools.
Go With the Flooring Flow
Tempting as it was to replace the tile kitchen floors with trendy wide-plank boards, Arruda wouldn’t have been solving the main issue at hand: All the other rooms on this level are covered in slender planks. While it wasn’t her first choice, it was less costly to replace the kitchen flooring with matching hardwood. “We just sanded it all down and gave it a natural stain, versus spending thousands and thousands to rip it all out,” she says.
Disguise the Necessities
The reason the designer’s clients had so many bags of beans on their countertop the first time she visited is because, even before they had a newborn, they drank a lot of coffee. “Even at night,” Arruda points out. So she wanted to give them the option to stash their machine and mugs out of sight with a countertop bar, complete with a tiny brass sink and pocket doors.
In a small kitchen, it’s the details like this that make it look a little bigger. Arruda wanted the vent hood to disappear, too, so she clad it in the same Zia tiles she used on the backsplash. The worktop is a honed quartz that gives the appearance of soapstone, and the cabinets are painted in Sherwin-Williams’s Connected Gray.
Fake Closed Storage With Fabric
When the designer told her clients it would be possible to fit a pantry, they almost didn’t believe her. “They looked at me like I had five heads,” she says. But she saw an opportunity to steal square footage from the nearby powder room. This meant closing off the bathroom access from the kitchen, but that really wasn’t a loss, as there’s a second door near the front entry anyway.
The shallow space didn’t have enough clearance for drawers, so the designer gave her clients closed storage for their blender and Crock-Pot in the form of a café curtain made out of the same performance fabric she used on the kitchen’s roman shades.
Make Showering Right After Breakfast Cool
The homeowners were totally cool with Arruda shrinking the powder room for more kitchen storage, but they were adamant about keeping the shower. “The husband had got used to using the main-floor shower. Having to always go upstairs wasn’t something they wanted,” says the designer. Add a kid and grandparents into the mix, and it made even more sense to keep it.
She shifted the placement of the shower to the shortest wall and clad it in Clé Tile’s blue-black Battle Armor tile. The sink was scored from Chateau Domingue, a Houston-based shop that’s loaded with architectural antiques. “They have all sorts of things, from tile to fireplace mantels—it’s one of my favorite places,” says Arruda. When the 19th-century piece arrived, it had a light gray sheen, but Arruda had her contractor finish it with a sealant to help protect the stone and also give it a rich luster that matched the shower tile better.
The brass-lined partition was a bespoke addition—in such a small space, “doors weren’t going to fly,” she says. “It’s going to hit something, either the vanity or hooks on the wall.” A curtain would have been a more cost-effective solution, but the designer points out that it would have made the space feel even more closed off. “The idea was to have the shower be the focal point,” she says. With plenty of storage in the custom vanity, there’s no need to ever call a pro organizer back in.