Holding

Pattern

A NEW KITCHEN MEETS MODERN-DAY NEEDS WHILE

KEEPING TIME WITH ITS ORIGINAL STYLE.

Cabinets for often-used jambalaya and gumbo pots, shelves for 60 cookbooks, and drawer

space for spices from garlic to garam masala led the list of requirements when Frank Brown

and Mark Scioneaux remodeled their kitchen. But all came second to their desire to be true

to the vintage roots of their historic Houston home.

“The kitchen had been badly remodeled in the 1950s,” Frank says. “There was very little

left of the 1920s kitchen, other than a broken-down china cabinet.” The piece itself couldn’t

be saved, but it provided the style cues for new sage-green cabinets with intricately cut

brackets and oil-rubbed brass hardware. Floor-to-ceiling built-ins on all three walls of the

llxl7-foot kitchen organize cooking equipment, dinnerware, and drygoods. A stack of five

drawers next to the refrigerator holds utensils. “We tried to work in drawers wherever we

could,” Mark says. The top cabinets store seldom-used pieces, such as the hand grinder Mark

pulls out once a year for rice dressing.

The kitchen is designed for efficient cooking: A U-shape work core surrounds a hard-

working island, and a 42-inch-wide peninsula topped with honed Zimbabwe granite offers

plenty of food prep space. Now Frank, whose specialties include ham, custard, and pie from

his Kentucky upbringing, and Mark, who makes Cajun dishes he learned in his New Orleans-

area childhood, enjoy a kitchen that’s as well-suited to two cooks as it is to 50 guests.

Historic neighborhood restrictions kept Mark Scioneaux and Frank Brown from adding on to their Tudor cottage,

above

, but removing interior walls opened up the kitchen. Opposite the windows, glass-front cabinets,

left,

are

ideal for storing family china, says Frank, a self-admitted pack rat and sentimentalist. Completing this storage wall:

a broom closet, drawers for baking supplies, cabinets for canned goods, cookbook shelves, and file drawers.

BYKITSELZER

PHOTOS

KIM CORNELISON

PRODUCED

BY SUSAN FOX

BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS

JANUARY ?OC>9

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