INSPIRATION - NHHome

The island, which was a must for the homeowners, includes a Wolfe dual-burner, storage and seating for four on gray leather stools from Grandin Road.

A Bedford couple transformed their dark, cramped kitchen into a spacious, lightfilled, beautiful and practical workspace.

The Cape house Tanya and George Bottas bought in Bedford six years ago had almost everything going for it: space for Tanya’s grand piano, an open plan, a sunroom with a vaulted ceiling and a finished basement with a second kitchen and a bathroom. The one strike against it was the main kitchen. “We disliked it so much, we almost didn’t buy the house,” says Tanya, a serious cook who makes everything from scratch. The small, awkward kitchen did not come close to serving the family’s needs. “There was very little storage space and very little prep area,” she says. “We were always bumping into each other.”

Tanya—an artist, graphic designer and musician—and George—a software engineer—were and are busy working and raising their two children. They had plans to redo the kitchen from the day they bought the house, but in the spring of 2018, the kitchen itself gave them the nudge via a leaking twenty-year-old refrigerator and a down-draft oven that stopped working.

Ultimately, the couple would double the size of their kitchen, turning a dark, awkward area into a bright, open welcoming space with plenty of room for living, socializing and preparing food. But the path to that destination had a few twists and turns.

Using Chief Architect design software, Tanya started mapping out a vision for the redesigned kitchen. She was already familiar with the program, having used it for a previous project—a pool and an outdoor kitchen in the backyard. “I think the software is pretty easy to use for anybody with at least some computer experience,” she says.

There were some aspects of the kitchen area that Tanya and George wanted to retain. They liked the existing openconcept floor plan with the centrally located kitchen that connected to a small sunroom with a wall of windows and a high-vaulted ceiling. Tanya definitely wanted to keep the large, walk-in pantry with its window.

The existing walk-in pantry was tough to save, but Chris Nickerson and Scott Hall were up to the challenge.

Opening up the kitchen while saving the pantry was difficult. Ultimately, they were able to double the size of the kitchen while incorporating wish-list items.

The main problems were a lack of flow; the sunroom was too small to put much furniture in; and the kitchen, also small, featured a diagonal peninsula that took up space without providing much in the way of usable work surface. In the midst of this area were both decorative columns (which could be removed) and structural columns (which could not). A secondary but serious problem was the lack of task lighting.

Tanya’s design involved incorporating the sunroom with the kitchen by removing the decorative half-walls and columns. She wanted an unobstructed view of the patio and pool area. She also wanted an island and a “gorgeous” range hood. The peninsula that divided the kitchen awkwardly in half definitely would go, and so would the dark cherry cabinets and the aging appliances. But due to the dimensional constraints of the space—including its structurally necessary columns—opening it up while saving the large pantry was a challenge. Backing the refrigerator partway into the pantry, so that it opened flush with the kitchen instead of intruding into the space, seemed like a workable solution.

At this point, Tanya and George were ready for some professional assistance. They interviewed a number of kitchen designers/contractors, but some weren’t interested in Tanya’s ideas. They wanted to use their own designs instead. Others seemed willing to follow her plan almost to the letter but without any attempt at problemsolving. “Most were telling me I needed to close it [the kitchen] off by putting a wall between the kitchen and dining room for cabinets,” says Tanya. Almost no one thought that the pantry could be saved, and certainly not with its window. What Tanya and George were looking for was a collaborator who would work off their initial vision while also offering solutions to problems.

From this view, you are standing in the kitchen looking into the airy, bright sunroom with its vaulted ceiling, dining table and wet bar. Half-walls and decorative columns were removed to connect the spaces. A spherical, polished-nickel chandelier carries over the circular theme of the globe lighting in the kitchen.

Through luck and persistence, they found Chris Nickerson, of Nickerson Designs in Windham, and Scott Hall, of Cabinetry by SM Hall in Goffstown, during the 2018 Manchester-Bedford Kitchen Tour. “The other designers were telling us what to do,” says Tanya. “Chris and Scott listened to us. They embraced my design and then enhanced it.”

Nickerson and Hall have worked together on numerous remodels for more than seven years. Theirs is a “strategic partnership,” says Nickerson, noting that they share a vision of how projects should be done, including dedication to making the client’s vision a reality, and attention to detail.

“You do all these little things that add up to something bigger and better,” Hall says.

Nickerson and Hall understood Tanya and George’s vision of maintaining an open design—and they also understood the challenges. “Space was very narrow,” Nickerson says. Tanya knew she had to give up some of the space in the pantry due to backing the refrigerator into it. Hall suggested removing the framed wall between the kitchen and the pantry, and replacing it with furniture-grade board and cabinetry around and behind the refrigerator inside the pantry. “His solution not only opened up the narrowness of the pantry area but also added a large amount of visible storage space,” George says.

Overall, the open-concept home is now ideal for living, socializing and cooking.

As work commenced, with master carpenter Jay Nester, of Northwood, participating as part of the essential team, the Bottases were lucky in that they had a spare kitchen in the basement. They didn’t have to resort to a makeshift kitchen in the family room—a typical situation for kitchen renovations. Nonetheless, Tanya says, laughing, “It was still painful.” Cooking for the family in a windowless basement for the two months’ duration of the project was not ideal.

Throughout the project, Hall had many ideas that Tanya says took her kitchen design to the next level. The most exciting was creating a passthrough for the side of the kitchen facing the dining room and surrounding it with glass cabinets that can be accessed from either side—dining room or kitchen. Hall placed the stovetop in the pass-through section of the counter and found a custom island hood to hang over it. Tanya had pictured the standalone range hood along a wall until Hall devised the pass-through solution. The hood provides a striking, finished look to the kitchen. In addition, a new doorway or “tunnel,” as the Bottases like to call it, created additional access to the dining room and mudroom, greatly improving traffic flow.

Another important addition to the kitchen was a ten-foot island incorporating a five-foot workstation sink ingeniously designed to make food preparation extra efficient. “The Galley”—from The Galley company, based in Oklahoma—is Tanya’s favorite part of the redesign. “Prep is a joy now,” she says. The versatile workstation allows the cutting boards and strainer to slide above and below each other on separate tiers. Additional custom boards enable serving and entertaining. Customdesigned storage areas under the sink provide easy stowing and access to the boards, mixing bowls and other cooking equipment. The Bottases outfitted The Galley workstation with many specialized accessories.

Presiding over the oversized sink are two handsome Waterstone faucets, which George describes as “the jewelry of the kitchen.” The faucets—among other kitchen accoutrements—are from Fixtures, Etc. Kitchen and Bath in Salem. The island includes a fifteeninch Wolf dual-burner, induction cooktop, which is handy for boiling pasta that can then be drained in the nearby sink. The island also has plenty of storage drawers and cabinets. On one side, there’s also seating for four on gray, leather stools from Grandin Road, headquartered in Ohio.

In the pass-through wall, there is also a Wolf oven and steam oven that Tanya particularly enjoys. “I use it to make many things, including eggs for the kids, and I usually use it to reheat leftovers,” she says. The steam oven works so well that the Bottases don’t use a microwave anymore.

Materials used in the redesign include leather-finished, granite countertops and cabinets from Executive Cabinetry in South Carolina that are Gold Certified by the Greenguard Environmental Institute. A panel-fronted Sub-Zero refrigerator acts as a partial “wall” between the pantry and kitchen. One touch that really helps make the kitch en pop, the Bottases say, is a white, marble tile with mother-of-pearl inlays. This tile is used as a backsplash to the right of the refrigerator and for the wet bar in the sunroom area. The tile is from Tile Gallery, Inc. in Manchester, and the granite countertops are from Key Stone Carvings in Londonderry.

The Bottases liked the oak flooring in the kitchen, and wanted to replace the linoleum flooring in the pantry and the different wood flooring in the sunroom area with oak to match. They chose an environmentally friendly, water-based urethane for the new flooring, and the contractors were able to employ that material so well that the old and new flooring blend seamlessly.

A vital element of the redesign is the lighting. All the fixtures in the house are from The Lighting Showroom in Bedford, including three glass globe pendants over the kitchen island as well as a spherical, polished-nickel chandelier with rhinestone accents in the sunroom area that carries the circular theme while adding some graphical contrast to the bright room. Equally important is the task lighting. There are eleven recessed lights in the kitchen, plus one in the pass-through and four in the pantry. LED strips under the cabinets and lights inside the cabinets help make it a light-filled environment. “It’s always brightly lit,” George says. “The lighting is really fantastic in the kitchen.”

“The lights make a really nice kitchen into a phenomenal kitchen,” Tanya says. All the outlets are hidden under cabinets—just one of the many details incorporated by Nickerson and Hall that the Bottases appreciate.

George and Tanya Bottas with their children (front), along with Chris Nickerson, of Nickerson Designs in Windham (left), and Scott Hall, of Cabinetry by SM Hall in Goffstown

An attractive, stained-wood vaulted ceiling and four floor-to-ceiling windows topped by a pair of triangular windows are in the sunroom area, formerly a separate room and now part of the kitchen. A kitchen table with an upholstered bench on one side and upholstered chairs on the other enables casual dining in a light-flooded space. As part of the redesign, the Bottases installed a wet bar with glass cabinets in the sunroom area, in place of an interior window.

The tile used in the wet bar and kitchen also occupies an entire wall in the downstairs powder room, which Nickerson and Hall also updated, along with the mudroom, laundry room, upstairs rooms and other rooms.

The finished kitchen is a pleasingly bright, predominately white workspace that is open to the dining room, sunroom area and living room. Where Hall installed a swinging galley door to the pantry next to the refrigerator, the door and the front of the refrigerator harmonize so well that you might not know the pantry is there when the door is closed.

“Now I get to cook in a gorgeous, high-functioning kitchen where I can see everyone, but no one bumps into me,” Tanya says. “If George is working and I’m working, we can do it at the same time.”

She also does all her baking prep in the pantry, now that it is equipped with deep counters for her appliances and plenty of storage, as well as a window for natural light and a feeling of spaciousness.

Both clients and contractors stressed the unusually cooperative nature of this redesign project.

Nickerson says because Tanya is a designer, there was a different feel to the project. “It was more of a collaboration than we usually have with clients,” he says.

For their part, the Bottases felt that Nickerson and Hall were more than just excellent contractors. “Chris is really good at design,” Tanya says.

“He has a fantastic eye,” George says. “He and Scott wanted to make this kitchen as spectacular as we did.”

As proof that everyone’s efforts were a success, the project came full circle, when the Bottases’ kitchen was included as part of the 2019 Manchester-Bedford Kitchen Tour, the same event at which clients and contractors had met a year earlier. NHH

A Kitchen Comes to Life