Case Study
The Maison Cordoba Kitchen Renovation In Nepean
A Traditional Kitchen & Scullery Renovation
Location: Nepean, ON
Style: Mediterranean-inspired, traditional, heritage-driven.
Timeline: Design Nov-Dec 2025 (2 months). Build Jan-May 2026 (4.5 months).
Scope: Kitchen (150 sq ft) + scullery (86 sq ft) + powder room and hallway (13 sq ft)
Standout Features:
- Dedicated scullery
- Arabescato Violet marble
- Custom plaster range hood
- Mirrored ceiling and checkerboard floor
- 9-foot window with structural rebuild
Our client, a successful Arabian chef, wanted her Nepean kitchen to feel like part of the home, and not a workspace.
With her family, she needed a space built for real cooking and entertaining, with materials rich enough to feel inherited, not installed.
- Moved the powder room into an existing closet, moved the laundry room to the basement
- That freed-up space became a dedicated scullery, hiding appliances and noise from the main kitchen
- Rebuilt the exterior wall to fit a new 9-foot window
- Finished in Arabescato Violet marble, warm oak, and unlacquered brass
THE BEFORE
The only main-floor bathroom was inside the laundry room. Each time, guests had to walk through the laundry mess to reach it. That is definitely not the first impression you want when entertaining.
Also, the laundry room shared a wall with the kitchen. So the noise constantly carried between the two.
Lastly, a small bay window blocked more light than it let in. Dark cabinetry and a heavy stainless island made the room feel utilitarian, and an open sightline to the dining room stripped away any sense of a defined space.
The Solution
First, we relocated the powder room into an existing main-floor walk-in closet beside the garage and moved the laundry room to the basement.
The space those 2 left behind became the new scullery connected to the kitchen through a new arched doorway.
To reinforce the traditional feel, we also reduced the large open sightline between the dining room and kitchen down to a modest arched doorway.
That single change did double duty.
- It gave the space a more intimate, room-by-room feel
- Created flexible storage for the homeowner’s inherited furniture pieces
The Challenge
Once we started demolition, we found some hard truths about the house.
The exterior wall behind the old bay window turned out to be a bare 2×4 stud wall.
The new 9-foot window needed a 2×6, per the structural engineer’s specs, so before we talked marble or brass, we started rebuilding a wall.
Then we found a rotted structural post, damage from an old water leak that had been fixed on the surface but never dealt with underneath. We had to replace it before closing the wall back up.
We also found a smaller, quieter problem: the floor heat vent sat right where the new sink cabinet needed to go. We relocated it into the cabinet toe kick, so it still works well without anyone seeing it.
None of these challenges were part of the original plan, but we worked them into the build without changing the timeline.
Materials
The homeowner wanted materials rich enough to feel a sense of heritage, something that would age with time rather than look tired.
So keeping that in mind, here are the materials we used.
- Main kitchen:
Polished Arabescato Violet marble (2cm) on counters and backsplash, extending under the custom plaster range hood and into a waterfall detail at the windowsill - Scullery:
3cm quartz counters and backsplash, 12×12 checkerboard tile set at 45 degrees, mirrored tile on the ceiling - Cabinetry:
Custom, warm oak tones, vertical panelling on upper cabinet backs, open corner cabinet with under-cabinet lighting - Fixtures:
Unlacquered brass in the main kitchen, champagne bronze in the scullery
Task lighting mattered a lot to the client, too.
So instead of relying on the existing overhead pot lights, we layered in pendant lights, wall sconces, and lamp-ready spots as the main light source after dark. Those definitely have a warmer feel than pot lights on their own.
We also removed the original cabinets, counters, and appliances intact and moved them to the basement for future reuse, if needed.
The Result
If you walk into this new kitchen today, it doesn’t read as a kitchen first.
The scullery now holds the appliances and the prep mess, so the main room comes across exactly how the client wanted from the start.
Also, the mirrored ceiling and checkerboard flooring in the scullery give this purely functional space its own personality.
The 9-foot window now brings in a lot of natural light and an open view to the backyard.
Overall, everything now looks inherited, like it’s always belonged to this family, just as our client wanted.
And it’ll only look more that way as the marble, oak, and brass age.
