Renovation · Salem, SC · 2025
Lake Keowee Kitchen & Great Room
A dated galley kitchen opened into the great room, with reclaimed beams left exposed and a new working island at the centre of the house.
The owners had lived with a closed galley kitchen for eleven years. It worked, but it put whoever was cooking in a different room from everyone else.
We took out the wall between the kitchen and the great room, carried the load on a new beam, and left the original reclaimed timbers exposed where they were sound. The new island is the working centre of the house: prep on one side, four seats on the other, and a run of drawers deep enough for the cookware that used to live in the garage.
Cabinetry is inset and painted on site. The range wall is a herringbone tile set tight to the hood surround, and the countertops are a single slab selected with the owners at the yard so the veining ran the length of the island rather than being broken by a seam.
The job ran eleven weeks from demolition to final walk-through. The family stayed in the house throughout, so we sequenced the work to keep a functioning sink and one oven available the entire time.