What a kitchen in Beaconsfield usually needs
Beaconsfield is about twenty five minutes from the workshop, straight out Highway 40 and down Saint-Charles or Woodland. It is far enough that we plan the day around it and close enough that a second trip is never a problem. We work there often, usually alongside jobs in Pointe-Claire and Kirkland on the same week, which keeps the driving sensible for everyone.
There are really two Beaconsfields as far as a kitchen is concerned. Above the tracks, the streets off Elm and St. Louis are full of split-levels and bungalows put up between the mid fifties and the early seventies. Below them, toward Lakeshore and through Beaurepaire, the houses get larger and older, some of them have been rebuilt inside more than once, and a few still have the original galley kitchen tucked behind a wall as though the room were meant to be hidden. The brief changes completely between the two, and it changes again if the house has already been extended at the back.
In the split-levels, the request is almost always the same. Take out the half wall between the kitchen and the dinette, run the cabinetry to the ceiling, and put a peninsula or a small island where the eating table used to sit. Those houses have low ceilings and a lot of trim, so the gain comes from height and from continuous lines rather than from square footage. In the lakeside houses the question is different. There is usually room, and the work is deciding where the second sink goes, whether the fridge should disappear behind panels, and how much of the room is allowed to look like a kitchen at all.
What we usually end up drawing
Painted shaker or a soft matte flat panel, in sprayed MDF, because both survive a room full of afternoon light off the lake without yellowing the way an older lacquer would. Uppers to the ceiling with a shallow crown. Drawers instead of low doors, which is the single change people notice most. A quartz counter in a low movement pattern, and a full height backsplash in the same stone so there is one less horizontal line in a room that already has plenty.
How the visit works
- We come to the house, measure every wall and photograph the room. Free, usually within the week.
- You get elevations drawn in AutoCAD, so the kitchen is settled on paper before anything is cut.
- The price is written, itemised and fixed against those drawings.
- Everything is built in Saint-Laurent, then delivered and installed by our own people.
- The doors carry a ten year warranty, and the hardware keeps its manufacturer coverage.
