From the Editor: Home is Where the Island is

Darla Worden and her dog, Henri. | Photo: Povy Kendall Atchison

Meet the family workroom—for cookie making, bread baking and even test taking as children do their homework. What did we do before the island appeared, rising up from the kitchen ocean, suddenly boss of the kitchen? In this issue, the island plays a starring role in designer Christine Kosoff’s kitchen.

As owner of Colorado Kitchen Designs, she brought her years of experience to her own home’s kitchen upgrade, centered around a 16-foot island with expansive room for her love of baking as well as space for her daughter to sit at the counter over homework or just linger and have a snack. Clad with an engineered stone PentalQuartz surface, the island serves as the family’s durable standby for projects culinary and not. For a Vail townhome remodel, in a bold move, architect Beth Levine opened up the interior, adding a new center-stage focal point: a stunning granite-topped island large enough to seat 12. Kathryn McCurdy of Thurston Kitchen + Bath collaborated on the mission to create the stylish-yet-comfortable space where everyone now loves to gather.

Our annual kitchens section offers stunners galore, with islands in many shapes and sizes— sometimes even double islands for separate dedicated tasks. Kitchens have been opened up, too, bringing unexpected, daring choices—like Mikal Otten’s “Log Cabin Wow” that challenges the expectations of what a typical log-home kitchen might look like. Or Andrea Schumacher and Annie Martin’s colorful kitchen, inspired by a Schumacher fabric they used for Roman shades, with its striking palette of white wall cabinets juxtaposed with blue island cabinetry and a custom Blue Star Range in a rich shade of green.

Darla Worden
Editor in Chief