Wayzata Kitchen

Project: Wayzata kitchen
Designer: Kym Majka
Firm: Inside Out, 952-476-4727

Simplified cottage-style elements distance this kitchen from the lackluster, all-white look that characterized it for years. “The upper cabinets were white melamine, and it had white appliances and countertops,” homeowner and designer Kym Majka says of the former space in her 1958 colonial two-story. “I hated it.”

But Majka and her family liked the kitchen’s function overall. “The work triangle was great,” she says. So, rather than start entirely from scratch, she designed an update that kept most 
elements in place—but refreshed with new wood and painted finishes, charming architectural details, smarter storage features, and savvy appliances.

Removing upper cabinets made the biggest difference. “It’s a small kitchen, and having upper cabinets made it seem so much smaller,” she says. The open design is less confining, and it reminds Majka of older European kitchens, which rarely featured upper cabinets. Dish storage moved to base cabinets in the peninsula.

Photo by Karen Melvin

Freeing up the old upper-cabinet space on the window wall allowed heavy crown molding and brackets to add much-desired cottage charm. The design, however, was unintentional—and, in fact, was a serendipitous solution to a problem cabinetmakers Travis Peterson and Ron Engelken of RG Home Improvement encountered when ripping out a soffit. “They found a copper pipe and said, ‘Kim, we have a problem,’ ” Majka now laughs. “So they had to build a little soffit and then cover it with molding.”

Another defining feature, the beadboard ceiling, was somewhat accidental as well. “The drywall guy didn’t come and was holding us up,” she says, “So we did beadboard, and I love it.” Cabinetmaker Peterson jokes about Majka’s love of beadboard, which was also used in the backsplashes and cabinets. “He even says to this day, ‘Let me guess, I suppose you want beadboard on that,’ when we’re working on other projects,” Majka says.

The dishwasher and refrigerator hide behind cabinet panels, but the wall oven and KitchenAid cooktop feature a stainless steel finish. The cooktop area includes a polished-nickel pot-filler faucet, “probably my favorite feature in the kitchen,” Majka says. “We cook lots of pasta and stew and soup, and it’s so convenient.”

Photo by Karen Melvin

From there, the cook can see into the adjacent office, which boasts the same cottage style as the kitchen, but by way of pine cabinetry that was stained rather than painted. The desktop, also built of pine, surprised Majka’s cabinetmakers, who said her kids’ pencil marks would mar the soft-wood surface. “But that’s exactly what I wanted, what you see on old desks,” Majka says. “I love the worn look. It’s so homey.”