Kitchen of the Week: An Ecofriendly Plywood Kitchen in the Cotswolds

Kitchen of the Week: An Ecofriendly Plywood Kitchen in the Cotswolds- This Cotswolds cook space was a little different to the projects Sam Shaw of Sustainable Kitchens usually designs. ‘We do lots of oak-fronted, Shaker-style kitchens,’ he explains. But the owners of this kitchen, part of a newly built ‘almost passive’ eco house near Stroud, were keen to use exposed plywood as the main material in the design. ‘They wanted it to tie in stylistically with the feel of the rest of the house, which features the same birch ply throughout,’ says Sam.

The kitchen is the heart of a very contemporary family home, newly designed by architectural designer, Charlie Luxton to complement its natural surroundings in the Cotswolds Hills.

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Kitchen at a Glance
Who lives here Tara Murphy and Dimitri Daras and their three small children
Location The Cotswolds
Designer Sam Shaw of Sustainable Kitchens
Size An open-plan kitchen of 4.2m x 4m within a 3 bedroom new build

Sam Shaw’s brief for this unusual country kitchen was twofold. Firstly, it had to work with the rest of the house, a newly designed, ecofriendly building near Stroud that Sam describes as a ‘modern cube with wooden shingles covering the outside and lots of zinc and glass, built to merge with its surroundings in the Cotswolds Hills’.

Secondly, the kitchen had to be robust. ‘Tara, the owner, runs Vietnamese cookery classes from home and so wanted the space to feel very much like a working kitchen,’ explains Sam. As such, there are several clever details that help the design to be fit for purpose as well as beautiful to look at.

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‘Typically, we work with oak frames and doors and birch ply carcassing,’ explains Sam of the kitchens he more typically designs. Here, however, it’s the birch plywood that takes centre stage. ‘It’s the best-quality plywood you can get for internal joinery,’ says Sam, ‘because it’s very stable. But Tara liked it mainly for its light colour.’

There was a continuity issue, too, since the house already had prominent birch ply internal doors and shelving, which Tara was keen to echo in the kitchen. All the wood used in the kitchen comes from sustainably managed forests.

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Tara wanted a kitchen island she could move around, so Sam mounted the birch ply construction he designed on giant castors, and says these are one of his favourite details in the room. ‘They’re completely over-the-top, very heavy engineering castors,’ he says, ‘but they look great.’

The island is also a bit lower than average, but Tara isn’t tall and wanted a working space at a comfortable height. There are sunken sockets in the floor, allowing her to plug in small kitchen appliances as needed.

The vintage lampshades usually hang over the family dining table and were all sourced by Tara and wired with bright green fabric flex.

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‘The door and drawer fronts were treated with lye to lighten them – it gives them a lovely soft, chalky feel,’ says Sam. ‘But the end grain and the recessed handles were left natural for contrast. Tara was keen to keep it all very honest.’ The plywood was all sealed with an ecofriendly, water-based matt lacquer.

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The island is clad on three sides with brushed stainless steel, perfect for a working kitchen. The side of the island you can see in this image shows the doors that have ventilation strips cut into them: inside are drawers with slatted bottoms for storing vegetables. ‘It’s never going to be like a cooled larder,’ says Sam, ‘but vegetables stay fresher for longer when there’s some air movement around them.’

Just visible on the left here you can see the huge ply sliding doors that open – at the back – onto the utility room and – in the foreground – onto the staircase downwards to the bedrooms, past bookshelves made from yet more beautiful birch ply.

Browse ideas for wonderful worktops

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There are three lighting sources in the kitchen: under-shelf lighting (more of which shortly), the overhead pendants and the bespoke over-island light, which Tara asked Sam to create to her specification. It’s made from the Douglas fir flooring and has an LED strip inside it. ‘It’s quite bright,’ says Sam, ‘and when the island faces the other direction, it casts a strip of light the length of the work surface.’

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Sustainable Kitchens custom-made the worktops and splashbacks – as well as the island – in conjunction with a steel engineering firm: 1mm-thick brushed steel sheeting was bonded onto the plywood with heat- and water-resistant glue. The kick panel is also stainless steel. ‘It continues that robust feel,’ says Sam. The splashback behind the hob was made employing the same process, but with two sheets bonded directly to the wall. ‘The double thickness gives it a bit more visual interest here,’ Sam adds.

Discover the perfect material for your splashback

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The shelf above the units, which runs across both solid kitchen walls uninterrupted, is made from Douglas fir, from Denmark, the same material as the floors. Tara deliberately ordered a little more than was required as she had an idea about putting it to use in the kitchen design. She and Sam came up with the design of the shelf between them.

‘We wanted it to look completely clean and seamless,’ says Sam of the floating, ‘wraparound’ design. ‘But because the Douglas fir boards are quite thin, it’s difficult to hide the fixings and make it strong.’ The secret is the clever ‘box’ structure, which boosts support and adds strength without compromising the streamlined visual effect.

Flooring and shelving made from Douglas fir, Dinesen.

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The horizontal sections of the shelf also all have warm white LED strips recessed into them on the underside. ‘They cast enough light to work with as task lighting,’ explains Sam, ‘but also make nice mood lighting.’

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Sam housed the extractor fan inside a specially built box, constructed from the same Douglas fir the shelf is made from. At the top of the box is a vent: because this house was designed to be environmentally passive (in fact it isn’t entirely passive, but is very close), the air isn’t vented directly out of the side of the building. Instead, air is sucked upwards and into a heat exchanger above the ceiling, which recycles warm air and expels the cold damp air.

Elibloc HT extractor fan, Elica. Ovens, Smeg. Induction hob, Neff. Möjlig gas hob, Ikea.

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The Vault sink has a lip that sits under the stainless steel of the worktop, where it was welded in. The metal of the worktop ‘folds up’ towards the splashback, which is then fitted over the top ‘like flashing on a roof,’ says Sam, ‘and that’s what keeps it watertight.’

The window ledges are made from more of the Douglas fir flooring.

Vault sink, Kohler.

TELL US…
What do you think of this contemporary country kitchen – do you like the trend for exposed plywood? Let us know in the Comments below.

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