Restoration Recipes

ITALIANATE COOKING

Carpenter Dane Cowen designed the cabinetry to resemble an 1880s butler’s pantry. The homeowners brought him an original cabinet door to create the design.

When old-house enthusiasts Larry Martin and Jerry Lesandro purchased their 1880s Italianate house in Ferndale, California, they wanted a kitchen that was historically accurate—but the existing 1960s kitchen wasn’t cutting it. They contacted Dane Cowen, a local carpenter and preservationist, to help them create a kitchen that would build on the house’s Victorian-era details. “Martin and Lesandro brought me a cabinet door from an old butler’s pantry they had found,” says Cowen. Working from that example, Cowen designed cabinets and mouldings for the kitchen and butler’s pantry. “It’s easier to create cabinets that look authentic when I work from an old piece,” says Cowen. “It’s the best way to copy the original proportions and scale.” From locally milled redwood Cowen built traditional face-frame, raised-panel doors that sit flush with the floor and ceiling. (There is no toekick, a telltale sign of contemporary cabinetry.) For a work surface, Cowen hand-planed sugar maple countertops with a coved maple backsplash. Martin faux-finished the woodwork in golden oak.

For added storage Cowen also built a pass-through cabinet between the kitchen and dining room. “It can be accessed on both sides from the butler’s shelf,” he notes. Martin and Lesandro found antique cast-iron pulls, cabinet catches, and hinges for the cabinetry at a local salvage shop. The drawers glide on center-mount drawer slides so you don’t see the modern mechanism from the drawer sides. Cowen also installed beadboard wainscoting around perimeter of the kitchen—another popular Victorian feature. Martin and Lesandro cook on an 1890s wood-burning stove they found at an antiques store and refurbished. The sink is an undermounted cast-iron bowl coated in porcelain with wall-mounted faucets. “Wall-mounting was typical in the Victorian era,” explains Cowen, “and it is this level of historical detailing that really makes the kitchen look and feel authentic.”