Oregon Home | 21 From the moment the Wise Design team first stepped inside their clients’ charming 1917 Portland Heights pied-à-terre, the home revealed its quiet grandeur: original floors and trim, a fireplace rich with character, and a private veranda overlooking lush grounds. The kitchen, however, told a different story. Small and cut off from the main living and dining spaces, and accessible only through a central hallway, it bore the marks of a disjointed 1960s renovation. Still, hints of its original soul remained, including a stretch of tile wainscoting—just enough to suggest what once was. The homeowners had called in Wise Design with a clear vision: to craft a kitchen that honored the home’s rich history with period-appropriate details while improving utility and flow, all within a mere 100 square feet of space. Other units in the building offered case studies for what various homeowners had done to optimize their own small kitchens. Some had removed the entire wall blocking the living and dining space to create an open floor plan. “This felt too contemporary, and we wanted to honor the historic nature of the kitchen being its own separate space,” says designer Ryan Harkrider of Wise Design, who worked on the project along with designer Bonney Johnson. Others had kept the walls in place and created U-shape kitchens with new cabinetry. While this solved the issue of available counterspace, it left those spaces feeling overly constrained. Wise Design’s solution—a daring move that seemed almost counterintuitive to making a smaller kitchen larger—proved to be most effective: the addition of a new large, cased opening connecting the kitchen to the dining room. The original hallway entrance was preserved, allowing natural light to flow into what would otherwise be a dark corridor, while the new opening dramatically improved circulation. With the layout resolved through connection rather than expansion, the design team was able to work with, instead of against, the kitchen’s size. Embracing the philosophy of building better, not bigger, the compact footprint allowed the homeowners to invest in exceptional materials and craftsmanship. “Material selections were made with a deep respect for the architecture, guided by the goal of returning the space to its former glory while still elevating it for modern living,” Johnson says. INTERIOR DESIGNERS Ryan Harkrider & Bonney Johnson, Wise Design CONTRACTOR Sheller & Sons CABINETRY George Ramos Woodworking TILE Tempest Tileworks PHOTOGRAPHER Seppi Redda The dishwasher was designed to look like a bank of drawers, balancing symmetry with the drawer bank on the other side of the sink.
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