In the early 1900s, summer estates on the North Shore were the epitome of elegance and grace. One of them, the Gale estate in Swampscott, called Greystone Hall, had it all: beautiful craftsmanship, lofty style, and enough historical spark to carry its story for more than a century.
A young couple with children felt lucky to acquire a piece of the estate—the building that is suspected to be the original chauffeur’s cottage—to make their home. The two-story house had undergone some unfortunate remodeling over the decades, including a major renovation of that very important room, the kitchen. But there was a plus: The homeowners knew that Jen Dulac, principal of her full-service interior design studio in Marblehead, would shepherd them to the kitchen of their domestic dreams.
Dulac loves history and relished the idea of transforming the kitchen, along with a powder room and butler’s pantry. As the designer recalls, “The question became, how do we undo an awkward renovation in an old, historic home, while at once recapturing the home’s original character and modernizing its livability?”
Dulac started with a basic observation. “The previous kitchen remodel in the 1990s was insensitive to the character of the home,” she says. Function and storage were inadequate. Also high on the minus list were poor insulation and a sloping floor (from a long-ago effort to cantilever the kitchen over the back of the house), both of which demanded attention. After those repairs, Dulac could begin to mull smaller architectural features and decorative touches.
To solve the major problems, including a new exterior wall, Dulac teamed with Conor Kelly of Kelly & Co. Construction in Swampscott. Surprisingly, the team didn’t need to add space to the kitchen’s floor plan; they got what they wanted through a refiguration: “We realized that by tweaking the layout, we could stay in the existing footprint.”
There were also other issues, including a door in the kitchen’s back right corner, which Dulac notes was “taking up a lot of space,” and which the team removed.
With those changes, the kitchen suddenly allowed for a very inspiring U-shaped workspace. The team shifted and widened the opening to the dining room to accommodate the workspace. Next came, much to the homeowners’ delight, enough room for a Thermador range with a powerful six-burner cooktop. Behind the range, blue and white tilework by an English company is a classic.
Reconfiguring the layout allowed for another wonderful addition to the room: a lovely kitchen island that offered both worktop space, under-counter storage, and a table-style seating arrangement on one end of the island, perfect for casual dining. A new bank of six-over-one windows showers light through the space and bolsters the home’s original character.
“The room became much more convivial,” Dulac says.
Crown Point Cabinetry in Claremont, New Hampshire, provided the kitchen cabinets, maple beauties painted a sage green (Clary Sage by Sherwin Williams). There is a hint of the same soft shade in the island, window trim, butler’s pantry, and powder room vanity. The kitchen floor had been a cold, uninspiring, 12-inch by 12-inch tile; today, it is a sweep of warm wood, stained in a rich walnut shade.
The butler’s pantry, just off the kitchen and with a door that leads to the back deck, has cabinets and open shelves for storing glassware, vintage cabbage ware, and equipment for visits to the beach, just down the street. The powder room, also near the kitchen, was a “very sad space,” Dulac recalls. Today it is wallpapered in a beguiling blue and green print, a subtle nod to the kitchen’s colors. “The kitchen and other spaces simply feel more gracious,” Dulac says. “There’s a new attention to detail.” Dulac, who previously co-owned an e-design company, finds that she loves the in-person aspect of her business today. And she takes time to cite the importance of the support that a robust team gives her. “Something like this can’t come together without all our colleagues in the trades and other experts. They are so essential.”