When Jeri Journeaux set out to design her new kitchen, she had a very clear vision of what she wanted in terms of aesthetics – beauty first, practicality second.
The kitchen was created from scratch at Jeri’s Sunbury home, a “wreck of a house” she’s been gradually refurbishing. For starters, Jeri decided to move the kitchen space from one end of the house to the other, knocking down walls along the way to achieve her dream.
She took her time researching the perfect material for her kitchen worktop surfaces, finally plumping for a Nero Marquina satin finish quartz. She says she was attracted to quartz over marble ‘by instinct’. Jeri is an old friend of Diespeker, who provided Carrara marble for the kitchen and bathroom at her previous home.
Not one to go easy on her suppliers, Jeri set Diespeker quite a challenge with this new project, particularly with the kitchen drawers. Not content with quartz for the worktop, Jeri also wanted to use it for the front of the drawers. Quartz is a pretty weighty material and the only way to make it work was for Diespeker to grind the quartz to just 10mm in thickness.
So Jeri had her beautiful drawer fronts – but her demands went further still as she also wanted the drawers to open and close effortlessly through electronic wizardry. This called on the ingenuity of ALR Carpentry and Simon Harvey-Williams, who Diespeker worked closely with to ensure the drawers worked the way Jeri wanted. Simon fabricated all the units and came up with a solution to incorporate Jeri’s specification for electronic wizardry. She’s delighted with the result. “If my hands are full, I simply use my hips to open the drawer – or if it’s the lower drawer, I tap it with my foot.”
Jeri freely admits she’s probably not the easiest of clients, as she’s passionate about the minutest detail. So Diespeker even had to cantilever out a small kitchen shelf – a fiddly job, she agrees, but the feature gives her great pleasure.
With everything carried out to her satisfaction, Jeri says she is delighted with the finished look. The satin black quartz provides a dramatic focus in a utilitarian interior which includes concrete flooring. Far from being severe, the intense black is thawed by its white veins, the brass accents in the mixer tap and warm strip lighting along the shelving.
Materials: Compac Quartz
Images: Soora Photography
