AN EXQUISITE ENGLISH SHAKER KITCHEN IN HERTFORDSHIRE

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Have you ever known what it is like to not know you want something until you see it? Or at least, you know you want that something, but don’t know you want it in a specific way until you finally see it. That is what happened to me when I saw this and the other gorgeous kitchens by deVOL. To be clear, I have always wanted a gorgeous kitchen, I just never really found one I had ever truly fallen in love with until I saw this one.

I love everything about this kitchen: the color, the style of the cabinets, the soft tones and livable feel. I even like the fact that there are not top cabinets, only bottom ones, and so the empty walls give off a sense of calm and add to the spaciousness. And maybe it’s the Italian (or European) in me, but for all of the beautiful open floor plan kitchens favored here in the United States, I love a kitchen that is a world onto itself, where you can close the door and stop the cooking smells from permeating the rest of the house. Because, seriously, if you are baking an apple pie, the fragrance wafting all over is kind of nice, but if you are cooking onions, or bacon… not so nice.

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I came across deVOL Kitchens on Instagram, in the “suggested for you” section, and it was love at first sight.

Pups presence aside (I am indeed used to stepping around them all the time), cooking for me is usually a solitary activity as I tend to enter a zone, almost a meditative space. I like to always start with a pristine kitchen, free of clutter and any overwhelm, and I then get into such a focused state that everything else is shut out.

I have quite a stack of images of beautiful kitchens saved up in my Pinterest board, not to mention in a folder on my computer, but none has ever had me in awe like this one. I have finally found the style of kitchen that truly suits me. This style speaks to my soul, and I didn’t even know a kitchen could do that.

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This particular kitchen lives in a beautiful house within an estate in Hertfordshire, England. It was custom designed to suit the room, of course. As it is, the owners moved the kitchen from the front to the back of the house in order to take advantage of the beautiful views and the access to the garden through the French doors that are original to the house.

They chose the simple design of the Shaker style in order to not distract from the other exquisite features of the room: high ceilings, the coving and the architrave around the room. I agree wholeheartedly. These people have good taste.

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I really love how the stove has been inset into a chimney breast, which in this case was added to the room. This required that casts be taken of the original coving so it could be recreated exactly for the addition. 

The big pantry cupboard on the end wall is where refrigerator and freezer are “hidden”, along with a pantry that includes a cold slab, drawers and spice racks.

Those wall cupboards that I so love the absence of were not necessary as there is a separate pantry in another part of the house where laundry items and additional kitchen supplies are stored. But then I always wanted a separate pantry anyway.

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DeVOL Kitchens is most definitely English, and started out in 1989 in a small rented workshop where the founders, Philip deVries and Paul O’Leary, both design graduates from Loughborough University, began by renovating antique furniture, as well as designing and making custom furniture for their clients.

Still based in Cotes, a small hamlet near Loughborough in Leicestershire, deVOL has expanded to become a group of companies to cover the widening array of products they create and services they offer with the help of over one-hundred-sixty staff.

Alas, for as much as I wish I had, I did not fly to England to take photos of this kitchen; the photo credit goes all to deVOL. This is not a sponsored post either, but their work is so exquisite that I just had to share it with you.

Thanks to the constant quality of their work across the board, as well as social media, the reputation of deVOL has crossed the Atlantic, receiving commissions from clients in places like New York and California. Besides their Cotes Mill and two showrooms in London, they are now opening one in Manhattan.

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