A Kitchen for Cooks and Kids

This remodeled kitchen with a 1930s look finds room for sit-down meals, cooking lessons, and homework sessions, all at the same time

Michael Pekovich had a love/hate relationship with his kitchen. Although a 1970s-era addition added much-needed light and space, it was ill-planned and inefficient. There was no room for a table and chairs that didn't block the back door, and the area was closed off from the adjacent dining room. After the remodel, the hate is gone from this relationship. The kitchen is now open to the dining room and shares a built-in buffet with it (the drawers open on both sides). The buffet wraps around to a useful computer station in the addition, where traffic patterns have improved thanks to a cherry dining counter. The primary worksurfaces are soapstone counters; the author made them himself, as well as the frame-and-panel cabinets.