“Feeling very lucky that I could create a beautiful kitchen in my own home,” writes chef and author Danielle Alvarez on Instagram as she shares photos of her finished renovation; her more than 50,000 followers flooding the comments with nothing but praise for the before-and-after transformation. The old space was a hodgepodge of styles, with its lofty ceiling, floors and windows the only characterful features to survive the renovation. Now swathed in the soft blue-green Danielle says she’s “obsessed” with, the reimagined kitchen is “calm” – a notable Alvarezism – as well as practical, and a lesson in designing for flow and looks in equal measure.”
“You can’t work in an ugly kitchen,” she exclaims. “We love our house so much but the kitchen left a lot to be desired, so from the beginning I knew this was going to be our first renovation project.” First went the dodgy appliances, tired benchtops, stained cork flooring, skimpy skylight and even the dishwasher-free setup (“Once you’ve had one you can never go back, right?” she laughs). Then, “we gutted it”, Danielle says.
Working with Richards Stanisich and Burra Design on the layout, Danielle rebuilt the room around the way she cooks. IKEA cabinets form the invisible foundations, elevated with custom Laminex fronts in the muted Spinifex finish, while brushed nickel mushroom knobs and pulls by MP & Sons Trading add timeless character. The biggest splurge was the jazzy Calacatta Viola natural stone from Marmonyx Stone. “The stone was the biggest single investment of the project but I knew from the start I wanted natural stone,” she swoons.
Elsewhere, a generous farmhouse sink, sleek mixer tap and Bora appliances complete the chef’s renovation toolkit, while the original timber floors were lovingly restored and a much larger skylight now floods the room with natural light.
“What was really important to me in this kitchen was having great appliances.”
Danielle Alvarez
For Danielle, the real luxury wasn’t just picking beautiful finishes, but being able to personalise her own space. Her non-negotiable? “Having heaps of storage for all my tools, all my platters and things like that,” she says. “Everything is hidden so it still feels calm.” There’s that word again. And after years spent in professional kitchens, it’s no surprise that’s what she was chasing at home. Her commercial kitchen experience, though, was instrumental in informing what went where.
“Being a chef, you learn how kitchens flow,” she says. So the rubbish bin sits directly beneath her chopping area, the dishwasher is exactly where she likes it beside the sink, and storage is positioned precisely where it’s needed. “Maybe your average person doesn’t think about those things, but it can really make or break how a kitchen feels to you.”
Of course, creating that flow required patience over the six weeks the renovation took to complete. “The toughest thing was the time between demolition and finishing,” she admits. “I was cooking outside with a camping stove!” But the payoff was worth it and, as we leave Danielle, only one detail remains unresolved: the perfect stool.
