Before & After: A “Cold” ‘90s Kitchen Gets the Coziest Green Facelift (for Under $1,700!)
When illustrator, ceramist, and calligrapher Manon Hoskam sold her house two years ago, she couldn’t find anything on the market that spoke to her. But once she looked away from the streets and set her sights on the water, she found exactly what she was looking for: a houseboat in Amsterdam.
The boat was originally built in 1948, but Manon says it was converted into a yacht in the 1990s, and that’s when the kitchen was added. Knowing that she planned to spend most of her time on the boat, the kitchen needed to be brought up to her standards.
She says the original kitchen was “narrow” with a steel worktop and high cabinets, which made the space feel “quite crammed,” even if it did offer ample storage. Additionally, the color scheme wasn’t her favorite. “The black was a bit too cold and modern for me, so we made some new kitchen fronts in a lovely green color that I also used in the bedroom,” Manon says. But she wanted to make changes without completely flipping the space.
Manon was inspired by the original kitchen as it was, and wanted to find a way to work with the original cabinets while aiming to “make it feel more cozy and more ‘me.’” She knew she wanted a ceramic farmhouse sink and a wooden kitchen top, “and I think [that] combines well with the green cabinets and brass tap, so that’s kind of how it took shape in my mind.”
Manon also works part-time at a custom furniture store that uses sustainable European wood. She’s always appreciated the look of French walnut, so she wanted her countertop to be clad in that and planned the rest of the space around that detail.
For the next 10 months, Manon took on the majority of the kitchen transformation herself. She also had some help from her coworkers at Houthandel van Steen, who lent a hand by handcrafting the new walnut counters, cabinet fronts (which are painted in RAL 7033 Cement Grey), installing the ceramic sink, tap, stove, shelf, and applying brass hardware to the cabinets. “I also tiled and grouted the back wall behind the new kitchen top myself, which was a first for me, but I loved it,” Manon says.
Between the warm tones of the wood countertops and brass hardware, the calming nature of the sage cabinets, and the Elsa Poderosa illustration, it’s fair to say this kitchen (which cost around €1,500 or $1,621 to complete) is so welcoming and, just as Manon wanted, perfectly “cozy.”
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