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By Tom Levine | Photography by Jason Weil
Deborah Zakheim will tell you “I like color. I’m not afraid of it.” Take one look at her kitchen and you won’t doubt her for a second.
Zakheim, a fabric designer, studied at Pratt Institute and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. She got a chance to flex her design muscles soon after her retirement when she and her husband Don decided to renovate the kitchen and family room of their house outside of Washington D.C. When the Zakheims purchased the 1970s contemporary several years ago, the kitchen was boxed in and outdated. To Deborah it just “didn’t feel good.” So, she painted it. Black. She is, after all, a woman who is not afraid of color. It was clear, however, that paint could only go so
far in fixing the house’s design issues.
After living in the house for about a year, the Zakheims began talking to architects and designers about remodeling the kitchen. Designer Ellyn Gutridge of Signature Kitchens, Additions & Baths was brought in to consult on cabinets. Deborah soon realized that she had found a designer who would listen to her, and Gutridge soon found that the Zakheims were clients with whom she did not need to compromise her own design values.
Deborah’s color sensibility is immediately evident in the finished space. Bright green is used to dramatic effect as is the dark wood of the cabinets, which are brown topped with a black glaze. Large bright green glass panels provide a great reflective quality, bringing the house’s natural setting indoors. The original kitchen failed to take advantage of one of the property’s best features, its heavily wooded yard that backs to a forested park. A new large picture window over one of the sinks provides not just a magnificent view but also a means to bring the ever-changing natural light into the room. The space looks different in the afternoon than it does in the morning, when, according to Deborah, it “sort of glows.” And it changes with the seasons. The reflection of the bare trees in the winter softens the contrast with the dark cabinets, and the vibrancy of spring heightens the intensity of the vivid green. The green is used frequently through colored glass panels, which also have a reflective quality that tempers the color. But make no mistake about it, the green is bold. It carries the rest of the room on its strong shoulders. It has chutzpah.
Although one would be tempted to simply label this the “green kitchen,” that would be an over-simplification. A bright blue glass pendant light hangs over an island clad in white. Both provide welcome visual counterpoints as does a panel of dark blue glass, which adds another layer of visual flavor. Two side-by-side tall vertical windows help break the expanse of a long wall, appearing as a pair of contemporary columns. They are a feature of the original house the Zakheims insisted on keeping in deference to the architectural integrity of the outside facade.
Integrating those windows into the new interior was only one of the issues Gutridge faced in translating the Zakheims’ vision into a coherent and functional design. She recalls that “it was really challenging to connect the spaces in the kitchen, to provide a cohesiveness.” The renovation required the removal of interior walls and a marriage of kitchen and family room functions. Gutridge nestled a comfortable seating area at one end of the new space. A substantial island helps pull the main space together. The deep tone of the cabinets rounds a far corner, creating a dining alcove with a wall of frames housing photographer Howard Schatz’s “Botanica” portfolio, a vividly colored nature series that provided Deborah Zakheim with the initial inspiration for the kitchen’s dramatic palette.
With its sleek surfaces, its integration of nature, and its vivid colors, this is a thoroughly modern kitchen. But it is also rooted in ancient ritual. It’s a kosher kitchen. Meat and dairy have to be kept separate and Gutridge created a design with a place for two of everything, right down to the kitchen sinks. One of those sinks sits under the large new picture window, a place that seems to float in the trees, a place Deborah half jokingly calls Central Park South. It’s a place about which she smiles and says, without irony, “I love to stand there and wash dishes.” And perhaps it is the place where she will spot a cardinal flying by and find the inspiration for her next project, thinking, “I am not afraid of color.”
Resources:
Signature Kitchens, Additions & Baths: signaturekab.net
From Vol. 6, No. 1 2015
Annapolis Home Magazine