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"A la recherche"
(in search)

aka The Blog

Kitchen Inspiration: Cameron Diaz's Kitchen Makes Me Swoon, and Other Green Inspiration

11/9/2014

6 Comments

 
How do I love thee, Cameron Diaz's kitchen? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height of thy emerald green cabinetry, thy clean lines and gilded edges, thy glamour and thy brassiness, thy cozy cocooniness, thy futuristic lighting juxtaposed with thy traditional woodwork and the graininess of thy wood...
Picture
I happened upon Cameron Diaz's kitchen, as I'm sure many of you did, in the October 2013 issue of Elle Decor. I remember flipping through the issue, turning the page to the above image and letting out a gasp of great joy. If I could have purred, I would have.

"This," I said to myself, "is a kitchen."

The story featured all of Cameron Diaz's incredible Manhattan apartment, designed by the incredible Kelly Wearstler. I wanted to climb through the magazine pages and into Cameron Diaz's apartment and live in all of its rooms, but this kitchen in particular... this kitchen... was something to behold. I wanted to pad barefoot around its wood floors, lounge on its countertop, leaning against its grainy emerald cabinetry, and savor a cup of coffee. I wanted to wash vegetables in its sink (and imagine that it had a disposal, because in my dreams, New York sinks have disposals). I wanted to have friends over and dribble lemon juice and leave red wine rings on the unlacquered brass countertops and marvel at how I didn't care that it was staining, that I was adding to its character, its patina, or as Cameron Diaz put it, "its soul"... I wanted to see how the kitchen would sparkle and glow if I turned that overhead light fixture on. Of course, in this fantasy, Cameron Diaz was also my best friend and participated in all the aforementioned activities with me. For example, we would turn the overhead light on and off and she would make this face:
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Let's look at the kitchen from another angle so we can see how it looks from other parts of the apartment:
Picture
I've given it a year now. I've looked at literally thousands of kitchens. I've veered off into different directions -- a white kitchen! a grey kitchen! black! navy! natural wood! -- but always it comes back to this one. The best part? Matt loves it too. Throughout the past year, as I've shown Matt my various ideas for how we might one day renovate our dated galley kitchen -- the white, the grey, the black, the navy, etc. -- he always says, "That's nice, but what about that green one?"

And so I said, "You're right! What about that green one?" And the more I had the green in my head, the more I found inspiration everywhere I looked...

Our lamps in our entryway for example....
Picture

And these images from Anthropologie's October 2014 issues, which I ripped out and taped to our cabinets....
Picture
Picture
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And this kitchen by Bailey and Pete McCarthy (Bailey a decorator and writer of fab blog Peppermint Bliss) featured in Southern Living:
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And this kitchen designed by interior designer J. Randall Powers (it's his own home) and featured in Architectural Digest:
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And so, with all of that inspiration, the question becomes, how to adjust Cameron Diaz's ultra high-end Kelly Wearstler designed kitchen to a non-celebrity's budget and a family friendly design... and make it our own?

1) Keep all of the fabulous green cabinetry and brass hardware. Maybe even a brass sink.

2) Eliminate the unlacquered brass countertops, but keep the backsplash. As much as I love the countertops and I'd love to feel completely at ease with the stains I would inevitably create, I know that I would stress about the fine line between "giving the kitchen soul" and "completely destroying the counters"... and I would manage to completely destroy the counters.

3) Instead use perhaps a clean, white, easy-to-clean countertop (quartz?). Something durable, low maintenance and impossible to ruin.

4) Lighten the floors to a simple, easy, dark brown wood to flow with the rest of our apartment.

5) Five, plop one of our flame-colored Le Creuset pots into the image because we insisted upon getting the one so big that it won't fit in any cabinets and it now sits permanently on our range.

6) Try to imagine it all in a galley style instead of this nice little jewel box.


The result is something like the below image.
Picture
We've also toyed around with the same concept but with subway tile with dark grout instead of the brass backsplash, but that does seem to eliminate some of the warmth that is so key to this look.
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What do you think? What kitchens make you swoon??

Happy inspiring!
KK
6 Comments
Nancy Dattilo Wilson link
11/9/2014 10:35:05 am

How about dark green grout to capture the cabinet color? Or some glass tiles with green, coppery, white?

Reply
Kate
11/9/2014 12:39:53 pm

Nancy, I love those ideas!! Thank you! And thanks for reading this blog post! :)

Reply
Kay Lawson
11/9/2014 12:48:22 pm

Somehow I don't think my little old kitchen black fridge, range, micro, etc. would be to your liking. (Well, they aren't to my liking either). But . . . do you see any electrical outlets in these kitchens? Where do people plug in their toasters and coffee makers and the like? Or . . . maybe my tired old eyes just don't see the electrical outlets.

Reply
Kate
11/9/2014 01:02:50 pm

Ha! Aunt Kay, you are so right! I think these pretty kitchens are just for show. If you were to see my kitchen, you'd see the line up of appliances, the bowl of phone chargers, the outlets overstuffed... And I'm sure your kitchen would be to my liking (my kitchen little dated kitchen is even to my liking)! I talk a big game about glamour, but I really value utility above all else :) xoxo

Reply
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7/18/2017 01:25:01 am

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Michael link
11/30/2021 04:50:12 am

Great Article! Thank you for sharing this is very informative post, and looking forward to the latest one.

Reply



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    Kate Kelly

    I am an artist/designer and former financial professional with a background in comparative literature, business and design. I live in New York with my overworked lawyer husband and my two boys Michael and Theo and spend much of my free time dreaming about how to enhance the aesthetics of our little world. I am endlessly inspired and always in search of something new. This is a blog about my search, my inspiration and things I just really, really like or want.

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From the 'Gram...

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time.

- Marcel Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu
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Page headers currently feature lyrics from Talking Heads’ “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody),” written by David Byrne. This song, along with The Beatles’ “I Am The Walrus,” has been stuck in my head for the better part of 2020 and is making the pandemic more tolerable and inspiring me to create new beauty around me. I hope it brings you some joy too.
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  • Home/About
  • The Shop
  • Fine Art Weddings
    • Wedding Gallery >
      • Charlotte + Will (Water Mill Post-Wedding Brunch)
      • S. + A. (Fishers Island)
      • Sloane + Sam (Washington, CT)
      • Molly + John (Jupiter)
      • Quinn + Carlos (Cancun, Mexico)
      • Jess + Aaron (Upstate NY)
      • Katie + Dan (Maine)
      • Christina + Thomas (Palm Beach Rehearsal Dinner)
      • Elara + Peter (Greenwich Microwedding)
      • Clare + Riley (Greenwich Estate)
      • Morgan + Ryan (North Palm Beach)
      • Olivia + Thomas (Texas Post-Wedding Brunch)
      • Claudia + Matt (Maine)
    • The Ultra-Custom Process
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