Oak Grove couple writes their own recipe for a perfect cook’s kitchen.

Story by Joan Bellinghausen / Photos courtesy of INSPO by KHL Design Studio

When building their new home in Oak Grove, homeowners Vince and Penny Barreto set out to create their own recipe for the ideal kitchen.

The end result – one part beauty and one part functionality – blends together all the ingredients the couple individually and collectively wanted and needed in this vital space.

The Barreto’s achieved this balance with the help of Interior Designer Kelly Lankford with INSPO by KHL Design Studio. Kelly combined Penny’s focus on aesthetics with Vince’s passion for cooking.

“We knew we wanted to work with a designer who could marry our likes and dislikes,” Penny explains. “Kelly was really good about talking with us and understanding what we both wanted.”

The process started when the Barreto’s, who have been married for 43 years, wanted to downsize. They sold their house in Blue Springs, which they had built in 1999.

“We weren’t certain we wanted to build a house again,” Penny says.

But that changed when they found a house under construction in a new Oak Grove, MO neighborhood. The house’s half-acre corner lot caught their eye, and its location put them in close proximity to Vince’s manufacturing business.

“The house had a roof and a basement and had been framed in, so we knew we would be able to make the home ours,” says Penny.

From the get-go, Vince knew he “wanted a chef’s type kitchen” in the new house. A business owner and engineer by day, Vince loves to roll up his sleeves and get lost in the kitchen.

“Cooking is my creative outlet,” Vince says.

Cooking might be an understatement. Vince goes all out, making everything from scratch, whether simmering a homemade sauce for lasagna or grinding spices for an apple pie.

Vince’s enthusiasm for cooking stems from spending time in the kitchen as a child with his grandmother and great-grandmother. Then, early in his career, he sold specialized restaurant equipment that required him to train chefs at high-end restaurants and culinary institutes across the country on the equipment.

“My passion for cooking really progressed when I started dealing with chefs and restaurants,” he says.

The kitchen boasts chef-forward features – a prep pantry, high-end BTU range, convection oven and range hood offering a high CFM.

The prep pantry features black countertops and open shelving to house kitchen appliances and serving ware. A custom nine-foot door with seeded glass conceals the prep pantry from view.

While Vince focused on the culinary aspects, Penny concerned herself with the “look” of the kitchen. She found a picture on Pinterest with a small detail that she loved – thin black molding that framed the glass on cabinet doors.

“I really liked the black trim around the glass and thought it elevated the overall look of the cabinets,” Penny says.

Kelly agreed and mixed this element – a “picture frame fillet” – into the overall kitchen design, using that element on the glass-faced cabinets and carrying the black onto the island and cabinet hardware.

The kitchen showcases white oak cabinets with a slight gray wash and the white oak island with black stain. Kelly gives a huge shout-out to Porter Furniture for all the custom cabinetry.

Kelly credits the kitchen with setting the tone for the entire house with white oak continuing in the primary bathroom, the fireplace mantel and balusters on the stairway.

“The palette and the design of the kitchen drove the finishes for the rest of the house,” she explains.

Beautiful porcelain countertops and backsplash complement the cabinets.

“We had many discussions about the positives and negatives of quartz versus porcelain countertops so they could decide what would be the best for them,” says Kelly. “They looked at quite a few slabs of quartz but kept coming back to the porcelain.”

Penny echoes that sentiment. “Once we saw this slab, we knew it was the one we wanted.”

Vince liked that the porcelain is “very stain resistant and can accommodate a wide range of temperatures” and insisted on having the porcelain go from countertop to ceiling behind the range and hood “to make clean up so much easier”.

The kitchen also features a designated coffee bar and beverage area. To provide ready access to water for the coffee maker, the Barreto’s had a pot filler installed on the countertop instead of the typical location of the wall above a range.

This kitchen truly provides everything the Barreto’s wanted. Bon Appetit!