A Compromise of Efficiency and Design

By Peter O. Whiteley, Courtesy Sunset Magazine

How to pack efficiency and style into a small kitchen

PROBLEM. It was a typical cramped kitchen with a dull, dated look and inadequate storage space. "The challenge," according to furniture designer Miles clay, "was to make my space work more efficiently and look more contemporary." But he didn't want to go to the expense of enlarging his kitchen.

SOLUTION. Call it architectural sleight of hand: Clay concentrated on stylishly expanding storage capacity without blocking natural light. That meant designing a new wall of cabinets that reaches to the ceiling. The new cabinetry includes a special pedimented, ribbed-glass display space set in front of an existing window. It acts as a screen, letting in daylight while blocking views of a neighboring house. Built-in halogen downlights make the glass-shelved interior glow softly at night. Task lights under the flanking cabinets wash illumination across a shallow display shelf added to the tiled backsplash.

Clay was especially inventive with the notoriously inconvenient space above the refrigerator. Instead of one hard-to-reach compartment, he designed two deep units that pull out on tracks, their shelves facing sideways for easy access to tall boxes of cereal and crackers. He used the same side-facing pullout for a slender spice cabinet to the left of the refrigerator.