Two Kitchens in One House

The house was still being finished when the work went in: film still on the extract duct, paper tape still round the ceiling line, though the chandelier and the stone floor with its black inlaid border were already done. Both kitchens are hard rooms, stone floor, stone tops, stone splashback, two stainless hoods. There is almost nothing in either of them that is not stone or steel.

Ours is the reclaimed teak in both kitchens: the tall glazed cabinet, the wall units that turn the corner, and the base units under the stone. The stone tops, the island cladding, the patterned tile, the hoods and the floor belong to other trades. The glazed cabinet is several centimetres deeper than the wall units beside it, but the two were finished at exactly the same height, so the top line of the woodwork runs unbroken around the corner. The run also stops short on either side of the patterned tile behind the cooker, leaving that panel whole.

The two kitchens are used differently and speak the same language. Every front is a flat panel with the grain standing upright, every run finishes at the ceiling, and every drawer and base door in both rooms is opened by the same slim pale bar. The one place the language changes is the glazed cabinet, which carries no metal on its doors at all: the pulls there are slim teak strips set into the frames, so each door is left as timber and clear glass with nothing crossing it.

The two rooms eat differently. The one with the island and the glazed cabinet is the room that gets looked at; the other is where the work happens. But the wood sits in the same position in both, between stone above and stone below, and it is the only thing in the room that hands are on all day. Hot pans land beside it, doors are opened with wet hands. It is also the only material in there that can be repaired in one place: a cracked slab is a new slab, a scuffed door is a patch.