Rebekah's Kitchen

Big kitchens are in fashion these days. We build quite a few of them, with many drawers, miles of counter, and large appliances. These kitchens for sure have their pleasures, particularly for entertaining.

But we have customers who have only enough space for a very compact kitchen. Other clients might have enough room for a large setup, but prefer a kitchen just big enough to cook in, plus just a little more. Several of the professional cooks we have worked for are among this group. The reason is simple: A small kitchen saves time. If well thought out, it allows the cook to prepare meals without unnecessary running back and forth. The things most-used are right at hand. I personally find that a just-right, compact layout – optimum rather than maximum – is more fun, graceful, and physically pleasurable to work in.

Of course, a smaller kitchen requires more thorough, thoughtful planning. It has to be well-imagined. In a restaurant in Brattleboro – a tiny little place – we watched the chef cook for five tables at a counter no more than three feet wide, cleaning up each time an operation was completed. He worked calmly, with a beatific smile at times.

The kitchen pictured here is small by necessity; it's in a small basement flat near Harvard Square with very limited space. Though we certainly helped with the design, our client, Rebekah Bjork figured out most of it. It is so tiny, it's hard to photograph. Here's the Plan:

Here's the left side. The obvious necessity is to have small appliances. The stove is 20”, the sink I think is a double sink, about 23” wide. On the right that cutting board leaning up can be laid over the right-hand bowl to use as a chopping surface. So she really has two nice prep counters there.

 

On the right, the fridge also is small, only 24”. But this makes room for quite a lot of good storage, both up and down, and what still strikes me as a huge, wide, work area. We've build quite a lot of big kitchen where the prep counters are no more capacious than here. The units in the middle are trash and compost.

You can see that Rebekah has used every inch, up, down, and in between. This isn't a minimalist kitchen. She has lots of ingredients, lots of spices, lots of dishes, but she's found room for all of it. It's worth noting that the design makes thorough use of the “margin” - the space right above the counter which is often not used at all. Narrow small stuff can be stored there without interfering with the counter.

Though this is tiny, she does a lot of canning. Here's the proof.