The Hart Osborn kitchen is an American cousin of a rustic Italian villa.
Kitchens & Baths
La Cucina Dolci
A Kirkland kitchen cooks up Italian style, candlelight and all

Monica Hart Osborn, true to her Italian roots, gestures broadly as she tells the tale of remodeling her Juanita home. Launched in 2003, the project 
now looks gracefully finito, finished, complete. But more built-ins and alterations are forthcoming, she says of this true work in progress.

Being the contractor as well as the homeowner, she should know. The job fell to her after some twists and turns—and for the better.  It was she who envisioned the big picture, a culmination of her years filing away ideas from home magazines. And as a reporter and former KIRO-TV news anchor, Monica is a natural at tracking down sources.

With the help of architect Brice Butler, Monica and her husband, Simeon, made plans to add 4,000 square feet onto their original 2,400-square-foot lakeside home. Butler coached Monica on how to bid out projects, and then she was on her way, wearing a virtual hard hat and showing her interior sketches to subcontractors. Eventually, modest-sized rooms became expansive spaces with 12-foot-high ceilings, cherry beams and grand fireplaces.

But it’s the capacious kitchen with its rich European dialect and punctuation that encapsulates life here. With doors opening to the patio, lake and dock and a straight shot to Mount Rainier, this kitchen is the sum of all the parts of Monica’s décor and entertaining ideas. Every planning detail led to this.

For inspiration, she channels a beloved Italian grandmother who cooked simply but richly, canned religiously and grouped the family for rustic yet elegant meals. Monica planned for the same type of togetherness in her own kitchen and dining room. The home lives for a crowd. A pot of crab bisque often bubbles on the Viking stove while friends linger and chat around the granite-topped island. For easy outdoor entertaining, Sub-Zero refrigerator drawers near the patio chill snacks and drinks. The dining table seats 12, and the adjacent butler’s pantry—itself the size of a small kitchen—fulfills a caterer’s dream with ample counters and a second dishwasher and sink.

Handsome carpentry around glass-doored cabinets flanks the stove. With double doors front and back, these cabinets are accessible and artful from both sides—in the kitchen and in the dining room. Medallion patterns, a passion of Monica’s, reprise in the finish work and the stove backsplash mosaic. Some cabinet doors are painted cream, others black, and the drawer pulls are a playful mix: gunmetal pewter knobs (“I love these because they look like buttons on double-breasted suits,” Monica says), faux-vintage crystal knobs and others so ornamented they look like brooches.

Two delicate Murano glass fixtures hang over the island, and therein lies another tale. Searching for the pendant chandeliers after seeing them online, Monica came up empty-handed. So she called the Italian factory, leapt the language barrier and placed an order. The chandeliers arrived intact, but she didn’t realize they’d be shipped in 24 separate pieces. Assembly required. “They were spread out everywhere,” Monica recalls with residual frustration.

Decorated with candles aglow, even at noon, the home is cozy with beckoning, overstuffed chairs and dense, woodsy, natural elements. “The paint color is [like] the back of a dried magnolia leaf,” she says, pointing to the rich brown on the dining-room walls. Twigs, feathers and aged botanical prints bring warmth to the home’s grandeur.

“I wanted a European country-manor home,” Monica says. And step by step, she built her sogno che si avvera (dream come true), as Grandmother might say.

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2010 issue of Seattle Homes & Lifestyles.

Say ciao at LaFamigliaDesignLLC.com, Monica Hart Osborn's blog on décor and entertaining.

RESOURCES:

Architect: Brice Butler, High Horse Design, 781 Twisp-Carlton Road, Twisp, (206) 914-0746.

Finish Work: Wayne Holland, Architectural Hardware & Woodworks, 13529 Old Snohomish Monroe Road, Snohomish, (206) 226-3378.

Electrician: Andrew Clarke, ANM Electric, 8810 172nd Ave. N.E., Redmond, (425) 861-7195.