Kitchen of the Week: Color Bursts Enliven an Arkansas Kitchen

Colorful personalities often call for a brilliant kitchen, but these playful customers also wanted a space they would love and use for years to come. Bret Franks Construction functioned to build a kitchen which would handle all of their demands, despite challenges that were spatial. Minimal wall area, shared traffic routes with the remainder of the home and plans to get an adjacent laundry room initially limited the team’s choices to your kitchen floor plan. But designing outside of the traditional work triangle and adding a few playful elements led to an enjoyable space that feels spacious and is simple to use.

Kitchen at a Glance

Location: Conway, Arkansas
Size: 288 square feet
Price: $17,250 (materials, appliances and setup)

Bret Franks Construction, Inc..

Located almost directly at the middle of the home, the kitchen opens up to nearly every major living space on this floor, for example, mudroom, stairwell, dining area, living room and whirlpool.

The kitchen’s plan is due to the limited wall space. The dishwasher, sink and stove sit on a single wall. There is a microwave in the cabinet with the door, and the refrigerator is on a short wall area between the sunroom and kitchen. “It’s certainly not the typical work triangle so often recommended to get a kitchen,” says Bret Franks. “But, the result is a creative and practical use of space”

Dishwasher, refrigerator, stove: Frigidaire; faucet: Whitehaus; faucet: Danze; hood: Kobe

Bret Franks Construction, Inc..

One of the customers wanted to be able to show off her colorful dish collection, so Franks installed several base cupboard drawers for extra storage and put glass inserts on the top cabinets — except for the venting cupboard above the range hood. The brand new cabinetry price about $5,500, plus an extra $350 for your glass inserts.

Countertop: Caesarstone, Organic White

Bret Franks Construction, Inc..

The customers found the playful Clayhaus Ceramics tile online and instantly fell in love with the color mix. The mixture of green, orange, gray and black ended up determining the remainder of the kitchen’s colors: the gray cabinetry, the adjacent tangerine mudroom and respective black accents. Custom made painting ended up costing approximately $1,800, while the backsplash price around $300 (for substances only).

Cabinetry paint: Mindful Gray, Sherwin-Williams

Bret Franks Construction, Inc..

The home’s original plan had the mudroom as a laundry area, which left little space to your walk-in the customers desired. Franks and her team ended up transferring the laundry area to a different portion of the home, making room for a larger mudroom and a walk-in cupboard. The screen door provides a playful architectural element and allows for ventilation.

Orange mudroom paint: Tango, Sherwin-Williams; red pendant: The Old Dixie Cord Light in Barn Red, Barn Light Electric

Bret Franks Construction, Inc..

A couple quirky elements — like numbered cabinet pulls, lettered drawer pulls and lighting with old-fashioned touches — give the space character. The clients knowingly chose things that would make the brand new house look as if it had been designed over time.

Drawer and cupboard pulls: Etsy; pendant light above sink: McCoy, Rejuvenation Hardware; pendants over island: Independence, Hudson Valley

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