{"id":2614,"date":"2025-09-15T17:25:01","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T09:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homeofmaterials.com\/2025\/09\/15\/kitchen-of-the-week-a-victorian-renovation-by-an-american-in-london\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T17:25:01","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T09:25:01","slug":"kitchen-of-the-week-a-victorian-renovation-by-an-american-in-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homeofmaterials.com\/it\/kitchen-of-the-week-a-victorian-renovation-by-an-american-in-london\/","title":{"rendered":"La cucina della settimana: La ristrutturazione vittoriana di un americano a Londra"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leanne Kilroy knows a good thing when she sees it. She fell hard for her future spouse, Eric Fulwiler, as a high school freshman in Newton, Massachusetts. \u201cIt is nuts to me that my husband was the 14-year-old with braces and a buzzcut that would pass me notes in math class!\u201d she shares. \u201cIt especially weirds me out because we broke up for 13 years and I loved him so much the whole time\u2014it seemed impossible that we would ever be together again.\u201d Yet here they are today, happily married, living in a Victorian townhouse in London with three girls, an au pair, and a cat (and most recently, two Ukrainian refugees).<\/p>\n

Clearly, Leanne has vision. As the founder of Good Bones, an online shop specializing in vintage and antique Scandinavian and mid-century pieces, she has an eye for spotting hidden treasures (a talent she shares with her dad, who owned \u201d the legendary but now-closed antiques shop on Beacon Hill in Boston, called Danish Country\u201d). And as a designer, she loves nothing more than to remodel a space with potential (good bones, if you will).<\/p>\n

Just take a look at her kitchen. When the couple purchased the home, \u201cit was a boarding house, with a second kitchen upstairs and lots of chopped-up spaces, and it wasn\u2019t in the best condition. The main kitchen was, quite literally, disgusting,\u201d she tells us. Undaunted, Leanne sketched out plans for an extension involving Shaker cabinets and lots of skylights and windows (\u201cthe best way to describe what we were going for is a \u201cVictorian orangerie\u201d)\u2014and trusted in her vision.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how it all came together.<\/p>\n

Photography by Leanne Kilroy.<\/p>\n


Above: \u201cThe starting point was the glass roof. We knew we wanted the kitchen to sit under a fully glazed roof, and we also wanted to avoid anything modern that might clash with the Victorian bones of the house,\u201d says Leanne. Also on her must-have list: Shaker cabinets. She received outrageous estimates for custom ones (one place quoted nearly \u00a320,000 for essentially six cabinets). Her solution: hiring furniture restoration firm Monkey and Bird to make the cabinets affordably.
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Above: \u201cThe kitchen is a big mix of new and old,\u201d says Leanne. She found the pantry doors on eBay and whitewashed them with a mixture of white undercoat and water. The milk glass pendant lights are also vintage, from Agapanthus Interiors. The sink was custom-made by a commercial catering equipment company called KS Kitchen Solutions. \u201cThe faucets are cheapos from the US; I bought them online from Kingston Brass for under $100 each and carried them back in my suitcase last summer.\u201d
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Above: \u201cWe built the pantry to fit the vintage doors, then reused an old architrave from elsewhere in the house to make them look like they\u2019d always been there,\u201d says Leanne. Inside the pantry, a breakfast station of small appliances awaits, including a blender, coffee maker, and toaster. Behind the sink skirt is a microwave. The inside is painted Muga by Paint & Paper Library.
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Above: The floor is engineered French ash, with underfloor heating, finished with an invisible oil. The counters and island are topped with bianco eclipsia quartzite in a leathered finish.,

Above: \u201cIf I had to pick my favorite part of this kitchen, it\u2019s probably, predictably, the glass. I love the glass roof so much, it transforms dark London days indoors,\u201d says Leanne.
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Above:  \u201cI found our epic kitchen bench, technically called a \u2018settle\u2019 here in England, on Instagram from a seller called Stowaway London. I fell for it so hard, we ended up reworking the dining nook plans to fit it in.\u201d The two wall lights are from Jim Lawrence, with shades Leanne bought on Amazon and painted herself.
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Above: \u201cThe glass doors of the wall cupboard were also an eBay find, and we made the wall cupboard to fit them. I\u2019ve left them in exactly the condition they were when they arrived \u2014covered in old, chipping paint\u2014partly because I was worried that the big panes of glass may break if I tried to mess with them, but also because I like how they look like they\u2019ve always belonged there.\u201d,

Above: \u201cThe fridge\/freezer lives in the corner next to the apothecary and is surrounded by a paneled wooden box made by Monkey and Bird so it blends right in without the expense of being fully integrated.\u201d
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Above: \u201cThe stove is the only thing we saved from the house\u2019s main kitchen when we moved in. It\u2019s a 20-year-old Fisher & Paykel 1200mm range on its last legs,\u201d says Leanne. In addition to the pendant lights, two clip-on task lights\u2014the Tertial from IKEA\u2014and a diffused LED strip integrated into the entire length of the floating shelf provide ample task lighting.
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Above: A nearly invisible pantry, cut into the wall with shallow shelving, is the perfect spot for canned goods and more pantry items. The interior is painted the same color as the steps (Double Smoked Green Blue by Atelier Ellis). <\/p>\n

For more Kitchens of the Week, see:<\/p>\n