The kitchen of your dreams doesn’t have to eat up several hundred square feet at the back of a McMansion.

Food critic and writer Phyllis Stein-Novack created her personal culinary heaven from less than 100 square feet by choosing the right cabinets, appliances, flooring, lighting and color. Plus, she got storage galore by relocating the washer and dryer to the second floor of the two-story townhouse she shares with her husband, Edward Novack, and her 92-year-old mother, Berthe.

It wasn’t quite that simple, of course. What started as just a new kitchen ended up being a complete gutting of the townhouse, which was almost 20 years old when the Novacks bought it in 1989 as their first house as a married couple.

“The stove was down to two burners,” Stein-Novack says, so she suggested redoing the kitchen. But after a visit to a friend’s air-light rowhouse that had just been renovated, her husband decided that they should redo the whole house.

Rather than live with dust and plaster, they moved to an apartment nearby for 16 months. In August, after spending thousands of dollars — $60,000 to $70,000 on the kitchen alone, she says — they returned to a far-from-finished house.

And they’re still spending.

“We’re still waiting for the tile,” Stein-Novack says, pointing to the floor of the first-story half-bath. “And that’s going,” she adds, pointing to a dual-flush toilet that has been a bit difficult for some to master.

But she’s pleased as punch with her kitchen, though bits and pieces of it, too, are unfinished, such as the substantial walk-in pantry hidden by louvered doors (which once held that washer and dryer), and the light for the stainless-steel hood that crowns the Wolf electric-induction cooktop.

During a tour, she gives in to the natural tendency to point out flaws awaiting correction.

“You’ll notice we’re missing a chair,” Stein-Novack says, gesturing to the place where the glass-topped kitchen table meets the wall. “That’s being used in the office upstairs, but now that I’ve received the material to cover the chairs, it will be coming back.”

And the light fixture dangling above the table? “This is going,” she says.

Details.

But details are important. Like the colors — “Dijon mustard, Anjou pear, extra-virgin olive oil, and pomegranate” — that change as the light changes during the day.

“The morning light is the best, which is why you can find us here at 5:30 a.m.,” Stein-Novack says. A large window overlooks a courtyard, providing a view of the couple’s dogwood tree.

Interior designer Leslie John Koeser did the pencil-sketch floor plan of the kitchen — where the fridge would be, the corner sink, and the like.

Paige Turner of Lawrence & Co. sat down with Stein-Novack to plan out all the cabinets, drawers, trim, and related paraphernalia.

With her job, Stein-Novack needs a kitchen for testing recipes and entertaining, as well as for day-to-day food prep. But she recognizes that a top-of-the-line kitchen doesn’t guarantee comparable cooking.

“From time to time, I think, ‘Will this kitchen make me a better cook?’ Of course not. You should see the dishes I’ve whipped up on hot plates or using appliances circa World War II in a Pullman kitchen on South 21st Street (in Philadelphia).

“Does it make me a more efficient cook? You bet. More creative? You bet. I am not an appliance junkie, but these appliances make life in the kitchen easier and fun.”

And what appliances!

“I asked Georges Perrier what to buy, and he said, ‘Phyllis, Sub-Zero Wolf,’ ” she says, in a lighthearted imitation of the restaurateur.

So Sub-Zero Wolf it is, except for the Bosch dishwasher, which most of her friends urged her to buy.

A microwave/convection oven and a regular convection oven grace one wall of the kitchen. A Sub-Zero refrigerator holds several times more food than a household of three requires.

But the induction cooktop inspires awe. Having an all-electric home and preferring not to have to constantly scour grates, Stein-Novack describes the ease with which the cooktop can be quickly wiped down in words bordering on poetry.

(The electricity in an induction cooktop flows through a coil to produce a magnetic field under the ceramic surface. When an iron or magnetic stainless pan is placed on the ceramic surface, currents are induced in the cooking utensil and instant heat is generated because of the resistance of the pan.)

Total cost of the appliances: $15,560.

The $13,000 cabinets, Brookhaven by Wood-Mode, are cognac color, “but with more red than brown,” Stein-Novack says, reflecting her careful study of cabinet doors.

“I cannot buy anything from pictures,” she says. “I have to study it before I buy.” Which is why she visited the Fretz Kitchen twice before deciding on an 8-inch-deep stainless-steel Franke sink and Grohe fixtures.

A kitchen floor of Italian ceramic tile was selected after hardwood was ruled out (too many moisture issues) and stone was deemed too expensive. The flooring, along with a glass-tile backsplash and granite countertops ($4,700), ties the kitchen and her color choices together seamlessly.

A stand-alone wine center consists of glass-fronted upper cabinets and lower ones fashioned from the same cognac-colored Brookhavens, linked by more granite countertop.

The cabinets hold glasses and red wines; for whites, a Sub-Zero wine cooler is built in below.

“We used to store the wine in this black thing in the hallway,” Stein-Novack says.

And then she asks, without missing a beat, “Should we put task lighting below and in the glassware upper cabinets?

“I think it’s a little too dark.”

source : www.orlandosentinel.com