It's all about our client Jina B. this week, so as promised, let's dish about that banquette area that we previewed earlier this week here. This is how the kitchen looked when she first purchased the home.
If you recall, we then did a very budget-friendly update with a few cans of paint, new appliances and some accessories. You can see the complete transformation here.
Jina now wished for a banquette, which can be costly since you typically need to have them custom made. But her banquette area was very close in width to the size of an unfinished pantry from Home Depot - flipped on its sides of course. Once on its side, the pantry also had the perfect seating height - 18". For added safety and support, we added plywood atop the pantry/seating and affixed the entire piece to the wall. We then added hinges for easy access to the banquette doors so she could use it to store some party items.
There would be some room between the seating and the existing kitchen cabinets so adding a base cabinet made sense. But since we had no plan to install additional granite for the new cabinet to be flush with the existing counter top, we decided to turn it into something she'd certainly appreciate - a wine rack. Yes, Jina loves her some wine so this would be a bit of a surprise since ya know, she kinda lets me do my thing. To build the wine rack we simply removed the doors, purchased ready made wine inserts (called wine lattice), painted and a wine rack was born. The area then became a little drink station of sorts for all the parties she has already had this year, and will continue to have. Without further ado, here is her kitchenette with a customized banquette, super cool Tulip table/chairs et al.
A huge shout out to Shiggaion, aka Shaggy of Circle Ten Maintenance, who executed this DIY and puts up with my crazy ideas - which usually start off something like, "Hey Shag, what ya doin? I have an idea." He never says no. As you can see, he's also our resident photographer.
Curtains/Pillows - Titan Decor