It took a few years, but I finally finished our kitchen. It’s a warm, eclectic jumble reminiscent of my favorite English kitchens in the ’70s and ’80s and clearly influenced, at least in terms of its unfitted character and focus on comfort, by the thinking of Johnny Grey. There are, of course, some distinctly American twists: the storage cabinet at the left of the stove, which is based on a 1927 pattern, the Big Chill retro fridge, and a Hoosier cabinet made from an elm tree salvaged by the City of Bloomington Urban Lumber Recovery program.

 A shallow cabinet painted classic 1930s green stores cookbooks, decorative pottery, and dictionaries for dinner-time etymological reference, as well as more typical kitchen fare.

The farmhouse table does double duty for dining and prep work. It’s also my favorite place for drawing.

The cypress plate rack is a nod to my first cabinetmaking employer, Roy Griffiths, whose 19th-century-inspired kitchen dressers were signature products of his Crosskeys Joinery. The base cabinets here are ash with salvaged hardware. The framed enamel still-life on the wall, a gift from my great-aunt Elizabeth Sunderland, is by Karl Drerup.

 (Yes, I’m aware of the missing dishwasher trim. I’ll get to that one of these years.)

Photography by Kendall Reeves, Spectrum Studio of Photography and Design