When Beautiful Kitchens & Baths selected our Newburyport kitchen for its Spring 2023 cover, it recognized something we believe deeply: a new kitchen in a historic home should feel as if it has always belonged there.

The home is a circa-1961 Cape built to a Royal Barry Wills design, and our clients wanted a spacious chef's kitchen within a plan that would let them age comfortably in place. We reconfigured the layout entirely — borrowing from an existing living area to create a main-floor primary suite, mudroom, and breezeway leading to a vaulted, light-filled kitchen with views to the backyard.

The kitchen itself is a double-galley arrangement anchored by a dark furniture-style island under a wood-paneled cathedral ceiling. Rather than defaulting to white, we wrapped the trim, ceiling, and perimeter cabinetry in a warm neutral — as we mentioned in the magazine, "It's not a white kitchen. It has that rich, historical tan color." Period details keep every new element age-appropriate: an antique-style reproduction sink, wall-mounted faucet, turn-latch hardware, and traditional millwork, balanced by leathered Taj Mahal quartzite and professional-grade appliances. A full pantry tucked behind a pocket door makes the open, upper-cabinet-free walls possible.

The feature also included our strategies for designing a pantry with the same character as the kitchen it serves — repeating materials, historically appropriate fabric skirt, and stone remnants that add style while saving cost.