The owner of this Jersey City 3 bedroom, two floor condominium had a real problem. He bought it! And it had no space for a kitchen!! And that’s not all. All of the bedrooms had no egress exterior windows and it wasn’t even in a basement. There are two ways out of the apartment since there is an entrance door on both levels, so I suppose it is legal to have no bedroom windows. But I’ve never seen anything like it! The entrance doors are down long skinny hallways on both levels that go to a very sculptural connecting stairway (shown above in an almost complete condition). The main living room is half a level up or down from these two hallways and has a floor to ceiling glass wall that looks out to the view that overlooks a railroad yard (behind the camera). The second floor master bedroom (to the right in this before picture) and the first floor bedroom below it actually look out into this open room through windows. It’s so weird, these are enclosed bedrooms, with doors and interior windows that will always have closed curtains to maintain privacy. The living room furniture is actually in front of the lower bedroom’s window!
Anyway, the space for the kitchen became the lower hallway, partially under the stair.
The owner wanted to hide the kitchen since it was between the front door and the living room. He didn’t want an exposed messy kitchen with exposed hi-tech appliances to be the first thing that a visitor would encounter.
Less than 7 feet wide by 11 feet long was available, including the walking space for the foyer/hallway. And as you will notice, it was almost impossible to take decent pictures of the space, because there is no space!
It was a good decision to call us up, because our Stealth Kitchen Modules™ turned out to be just the ticket to solve his problems.
So here is the American Black Walnut kitchen just off the main entrance to this urban condominium. The entire kitchen is actually composed of only 4 Stealth Kitchen Modules™. The 36″ wide Subzero refrigerator is flanked on the left by the range, and further to the left is the sink and dishwasher module. Behind the refrigerator to the right is a pantry module with a trash compartment.
We created a new model to conceal an induction cooktop, an over the range convection/microwave oven/exhaust hood and hidden below that is a built-in steam oven. Our normal range module is six feet wide and includes counter space on each side of the appliances, but there was no room here for that. The Subzero is to the right of the range.
The sink module includes all the prep/counter space and lots of storage underneath. The optional maple doors hide the shelving. Since this module has pocket doors to hide everything, I still don’t think the optional doors are necessary, but the owner did! Upper Storage Modules span the entire kitchen.
So, can we hide a kitchen in a foyer?
Just think of all the other places a Stealth Kitchen could go.
