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{joomplu:1462}A Kitchen Showcase by Vasi Ypsilantis of The Breakfast Room

The challenge: turn a rundown utilitarian kitchen into a designer’s showcase. If you look at the “before” photos, you can tell it was one challenge many might walk away from. But interior designer Vasi Ypsilantis of The Breakfast Room in Manhasset saw the potential.

Enough potential, in fact, to win not only a Notable Designer of the Year Award in the Mansions and Millionaires contest, but the $15,000 first-place prize in a kitchen design contest sponsored by Sub-Zero and Wolf.
The La Selva estate on Long Island’s Gold Coast was the site for the showcase. While the overall home is a fantastic traditional villa with many great architectural features, the kitchen was a nightmare. It had been utilized only by cooking staff and then by monks who were living at the estate. Design was totally absent from the picture.
“Most of the designers in the showcase said ‘You’re crazy taking that kitchen,’” Ypsilantis shared. “The judges at the Sub-Zero gala event in Palm Beach announced when I won that the kitchen didn’t only stand out to them in my ‘after’ photos, but it stood out to them in the horrendous ‘before’ photos as well.” A designer views a room as a blank canvas. “In all my design projects, I see the negative space as positive space. You start with the blank room and work with what is there until you fill it with things that make you feel good when you’re in it.”
The designer recognized some native features at La Selva that she determined had to be preserved in the 1915 home. From there, she created an original theme, complementing those features with wonderful new aesthetic details and with a layout and state-of-the-art appliances to suit today’s lifestyle.
A designer with her own construction staff, Ypsilantis went to work. She devised and added a beautiful ceiling that incorporated a curved stack that attached to the existing twelve-foot hood housing. “The ceiling design was a way to create a continuation with the rest of the home, which has beautiful ceilings throughout. I wanted to bring this room up to the rest of the house.”
{joomplu:1464}The original sink and window trim were preserved. Lots of color was used to bring the drab room to life. An artist painted over the stove hood, creating a woodland scene, in keeping with the home’s theme. “We also wanted to take this utilitarian room and match today’s more sophisticated kitchens, which are more like living rooms,” Ypsilantis said. She created a center island, which became the main feature, with six Sub-Zero refrigerators. “The entire island is refrigerators. It is a new way of thinking. European design has been steering away from upper cabinets and tall cabinets, so I thought ‘How cool would it be to have everything below counter level?’” In this new kitchen, everything can be easily accessed and, more importantly, the fine features of the room can be enjoyed.
“For a home like this one, with a lot of windows and the oversized hood, I thought you don’t want to see a lot of cabinets.” The result was the contemporary look in a traditional setting.
The Breakfast Room, Ltd. designs one-of-a-kind kitchens, with Ypsilantis personally handling projects from design concept to installation with her well-honed vision, service and in-house installation staff.

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