Bright U-Shape Kitchen with Quartz Counters

The Scope

The kitchen is U-shape, tight, and works hard for its footprint. White shaker cabinets wrap the room, punctuated by a stainless chimney hood over the cooktop and a tall column beside the refrigerator holding a wall oven with a microwave above it.

Counters are a light quartz with soft grey veining, run continuously around all three sides so there is no visible break in the surface. White subway tile with thin grout lines sits behind it, which keeps the wall quiet and lets the veining in the stone be the only pattern in the room.

The sink corner takes an undermount stainless basin with a gooseneck tap, set into the counter below the run of wall cabinets. The room stays white throughout — cabinetry, tile and walls — so the warm timber-look floor and the timber shelves are what bring the colour.

The peninsula does double duty. On the kitchen side it is prep space; on the open side two upholstered barstools tuck underneath the counter overhang, which turns the end of the run into somewhere to sit rather than something to walk around.

Above it, a run of floating wood shelves replaces what would otherwise be another bank of upper cabinets. That keeps the corner open and brings a warm tone into a room that is otherwise white cabinetry, white tile and white stone.

Underfoot the floor is a wide-plank wood-look tile in a warm tone, which carries the same warmth down to ground level. Hardware throughout is a brushed-nickel bar pull, on both the wall cabinets and the drawer fronts.

The last two photographs are from during the work rather than after it — the stripped floor with the tools still on it, and the original cabinet boxes exposed. They are here because the finished room does not show what it started as.