All products featured on Architectural Digest are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Nick Spain and Michael Bolognino live for ambitious projects. When looking for a home, the creative couple—Nick runs residential interior and garden design firm Arthur’s, while Michael works in marketing and was recently certified as a life coach—didn’t want a turnkey place, so they searched throughout upstate New York’s Catskills and Hudson Valley for a charming historic building they could gut, overhaul, and make their own. When they couldn’t find the right spot, they extended their hunt to the Berkshires and discovered a 4,500-square-foot, 1850s Italianate palace in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, which they now call The Filomena after Michael’s Sicilian grandmother.
The house, which had been on the market and uninhabited for four years, needed some serious TLC in the form of a deep clean and complete refresh. The layout was also outdated and closed-off. The old kitchen was at the back of the house and sectioned away from everything else, likely a relic of times when the room belonged to hired cooks. Nick and Michael wanted to pull the kitchen forward. “Kitchens are where people congregate; they’re the heart of the home,” Nick says. “We spend 80 percent of our time just hanging out there, so we wanted a place that was more accessible and central.” Now, they’ve got it—but it took some sweat and tears.
Kitchen location: Nick and Michael’s home is on the edge of a small, hippie-ish town in western Massachusetts. Overlooking Shaker Mill Pond, with the Berkshire foothills in the distance, the white mansion is two and a half hours from New York City by car. The luminous kitchen is now the first room in the house, directly to the left of the entrance.
The "before": “The family who had lived in the house before had 12 or 13 kids and they really Brady Bunch–ed out the whole place,” says Nick. The room that the couple chose to transform into the new kitchen had served as a playroom for the children and featured giant floor-to-ceiling closets and cubbies. Linoleum from the 1960s covered the floors and a wall with one small doorway blocked the room from the rest of the house. “That wall made it feel dark and claustrophobic,” Nick recalls. “One of the first things we did was knock it down.”
The inspiration: The only detail that Nick and Michael retained from the original room was the grid-patterned coffered ceiling. “That kind of informed the space,” says Nick. “We wanted to echo that geometry in the space, using a lot of squares and rectangles and right angles.” The other jumping-off point was the choice of countertop. The duo honored West Stockbridge’s history as a marble town by sourcing the classic material for the kitchen’s countertops and island. Since the town’s own quarries are no longer active, they opted for Danby marble from southern Vermont, a little over an hour away.
Square footage: Approximately 240 square feet
Budget: $45,000
Main ingredients:
Cabinetry: Ikea guts, Semihandmade fronts. “We bought unpainted cabinet fronts and then painted them on-site with Sherwin-Williams Requisite Gray. The company makes an exterior matte finish that we used on the cabinets. It makes them super durable and we don’t have to worry about hand smudges and things of that nature,” says Nick.
Wall color: Benjamin Moore Decorator’s White “It’s one of my favorite whites. It’s a really lovely, crisp white that has some warmth to it and really changes throughout the day.”
Backsplash: Fireclay Tile Flagstone
Floors: “The floors are original,” says Nick. “I spent many weekends ripping up five layers of linoleum and plywood. It was a labor of love and worth it in the end.”
Floating Shelves: Semihandmade
Appliances: Liebherr refrigerator, Brizo faucet, and Bertazzoni range
Light: “The light fixture is Andrew Neyer,” Nick says. “That is one of the first things we bought. Long before the kitchen was anywhere near being done, I knew that I wanted that piece above the island, so we got it.”
Most insane splurge: Nick and Michael originally wanted to put in a counter-depth fridge, but due to the layout and space constraints of the spot, they had to do a built-in fridge. The built-in Liebherr was the biggest splurge, followed by the Bertazzoni range, on which the couple loves to cook.
Sneakiest save: In terms of materials, the most obvious save was the Ikea cabinetry, but Nick says that eliminating labor costs whenever possible made the most substantial difference. “Truthfully, the biggest save, and what helped us come in under budget, was being willing to do a lot of the work ourselves,” he explains. “We did all of the demo. Basically, anything that didn’t require a licensed plumber, an electrician, or the skills of a very serious carpenter, we tried to do ourselves.”
The best part: “The most special element to me is a little Virgin of Guadalupe we got at a flea market in Mexico City,” says Nick. “It’s beautiful and hand-painted. The house was a rectory in the past and that’s another inspiration for the space. As far as finishes, we wanted to reference that history. We’ve got a few vaguely Catholic knickknacks. Definitely at least one in each room of the house.”
What I'd never do again: “Ripping up those linoleum floors. I’d give serious thought before signing up to do that again. It was painful and took a lot of time and effort, and I learned how to exercise patience, but there’s nothing I really wouldn’t do again,” Nick admits.
Final bill: “We actually came in under, which I was very happy about,” Nick reveals. The couple ended up spending a little over $43,000.
