Three Separate Rooms Became One Gorgeous, Mediterranean-Inspired Kitchen

It took nine months to reimagine the 1950s kitchen in Tess Atkinson’s London townhouse — coinciding almost exactly with her pregnancy with her daughter. The whole renovation was centered around creating a space for her growing family to gather. 

“It wasn’t designed for family living before we moved in; the house had been empty for years and tenanted prior to that,” Tess says. “We needed more storage and more space. And perhaps a bit more glam! The whole space was split into a hallway, dining room, and kitchen, and we turned it into one space.”

Not only did Tess want the kitchen to be more functional, but she also wanted to feel good in the space. Since the area where the kitchen now is in the basement the room doesn’t get much natural light. Every choice she made was in hopes that it would become an “amazing holiday home.” 

The first step of the renovation was removing two walls to open up the room. Next, the floors needed to be leveled and swapped out. Tess chose these stunning terracotta tiles to give the room “an almost Mediterranean feel,” and because this was taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic, she and her partner laid the floors themselves. “It’s not perfect, but it’s so special to us, and tiling is a much more manageable DIY than you would imagine,” she says. 

Next up was installing the cabinets — Tess jokes that she ended up with two style because she “mainly just couldn’t decide on one.” But it’s the perfect look, with one more modern (the deVOL Haberdasher’s units), and the other nodding to the home’s Georgian history (the shaker designs painted in Farrow & Ball’s Breakfast Room Green). 

She decided to mix and match other aspects of the kitchen, too. On eBay, she found nine slabs of marble and asked a tradesperson to clean, polish, and put them together. For the deVOL units, Tess chose warm, copper countertops that were brand-new and started to patina almost immediately. “Now it’s really special,” she says. “Every time you spill something, it’s almost exciting as a new stain forms.” Who would’ve thought?

The warmth that emanates from the complementary cabinets is the detail Tess loves most about her new space. “I love that our kitchen works for all stages of our life now — from hosting friends to big family meals at Christmas … to enjoying meals with our young daughter,” she says. This renovation is a dreamy example of transforming a space with personalized, rustic whimsy.

This post originally appeared on The Kitchn. See it there: Before & After: This Bright, Airy Kitchen Was Once a “Dark” ’50s Bathroom (It’s Unrecognizable!)