Northshore Magazine

Sunny Scullery The firm introduced a breakfast nook into the transitional kitchen design. result. "Less grooves, nooks, and crannies," he says. An example of Mentasti's painstaking work is a hidden door in the newly refined front hall. Disguised as a section of paneling, it provides access to a coat closet located under the stairs. Most of the time, the family uses an informal entry that leads into the kitchen from one of the new porches Gray designed to wrap around the house. Distinguished by a large, round cutout composed of a rope and ball lattice and centered with an elliptical opening, the porch speaks of a historic icon of the Shingle style. "I designed it after architectural elements at Kragsyde, a house in Manchester-by-the-Sea that no longer exists but is pictured in architecture books," Gray says. The porch leads into what Mentasti describes as a "scullery-style kitchen," which features a beadboard ceiling that defines the space and reflects light with high-gloss white paint. "The design is like a star," says De Bastiani. "We wanted to bring a cottagelike feeling to the kitchen, and to keep it pretty simple. The counters are covered with a dark gray granite that almost looks like soapstone." The counter on the island, he points out, is dark walnut. Beside the kitchen, a small breakfast room occupies a charming space: the lower level of an octagonal tower that is crowned with a copper roof. "It is the perfect place for a window seat," De Bastiani says. "We made it look like an English garden bench with cutouts in the back. The elliptical table was designed to fit the space," he adds. Sturdy blue fabric upholsters the seat of the curving bench while pretty blue and white pillows soften the back. "Almost every room is blue; the client just loves the color," De Bastiani points out. "We must have used 150 shades of blue in this house." He points out how appropriate the color is to a seaside home, and adds that the homeowner also loves Chinoiserie, which is suitable in an "The design is like a star. We wanted to bring a cottagelike feeling to the kitchen, and to keep it pretty simple." 186 KJ NS Mar14 FECarpenter.indd 186 1/17/14 10:54 AM

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