Interior Designer Abigail Foster Tells Us About Compromising on Design Choices

Sometimes a couple with conflicting wishes will come to a beautiful compromise. So it was for interior designer Abigail Foster and her husband when it came time to move out of his bachelor pad and into their own home. (They had two toddlers at the time.) “He’s from the suburbs and wanted to stay there, I’m from the city and wanted to stay there,” she says.

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They found a sort of gentleman’s farm on an acre of land in the middle of Pittsburgh. It’s one of the oldest houses in the area. It was, in many ways, the best of both worlds. The original structure was a mansion, no longer there, that was built in the 1880s and torn down in the 1930s, replaced by a simple Colonial next to a carriage barn. Oddly, the original had no proper kitchen, so they built one to connect the two structures. It was, incidentally, her first large-scale personal kitchen project.

Compromising When It Comes to Designing Your Home

You can’t see the home from the street, but you drive up between two houses and it suddenly appears. Do they use it as it was in the past, a working farm? “My little flower beds would never be called farming, although I do have a very large basil patch and do a lot of pesto making.” The couple is lucky enough to have a place in the actual country from which comes a bounty of produce that Foster makes into sauces, jams, and jellies, most of which she gives away.

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There is a separate butler’s pantry, but that is used more for entertaining than for storing the fruits of her labor. Drinks, the glassware, and the better china are kept there, across from the dining room, through swinging doors. The kitchen itself is more on the family side of the house, and acts more as a workhorse, with the pantry as a place to pause so things can be served in a more gracious manner.

Planning Out What’s Important

The family eats together every night, a meal almost always cooked by Foster, plus breakfasts and lunches. A lot of food is prepared there every day. She also takes on big projects like making toffee for everyone she knows at Christmas. The island is often covered with sheet pans and mixers or canning supplies for several days at a stretch. They also host Christmas dinner and frequently have friends and family over. It’s a real working kitchen. Her husband does not cook much. “He’s really good at making me a drink, though.” He does grill, however, and they put in a Dutch door that leads to the barbecuing area, through which things can be handed back and forth for convenience.

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An original plan had the kitchen being much larger, extending further out into the yard and with two islands. But after several rounds with her architect, they decided on something less expansive. “I didn’t want to wear roller skates every time I had to make a meal. I wanted a smaller, more compact kitchen that I could really cook in,” she says. She also didn’t envision it as a central hangout. It’s more of a cook’s kitchen in the proportions that made the most sense for day-to-day use. “I think most prolific home cooks would agree that you want a workspace where you can walk to everything in just a few steps”. After they eat, the family tends to go elsewhere in the house. “We’re in there a lot, but it’s not where I want everyone to be all the time.

Abigail Foster’s Family-Conscious Idea

Foster isn’t a fan of open layouts, either, but sees their utility because of the children, who are now school age. The kitchen opens up to a hallway she calls “the command center,” where there’s a desk, shelves for her cookbooks, etc. The hallway, in turn, opens to a paneled room where the family hangs out. It’s a large and somewhat formal-looking space, so the kitchen needed to speak to that and couldn’t be ultra-modern with lots of stainless steel.

The palette, built around a soothing green, was inspired by English kitchens that Foster really loves, and she thinks of it as a timeless choice—and different from typical white. The color also plays off of the lush foliage in the backyard that can be seen through the windows, which breaks down the indoor-outdoor barrier. “It’s really an enveloping color.” Like many who live in Pittsburgh, she also took into consideration the winter gloom. She says the green wraps around you and makes it feel cozy, a great spot to have some tea.

Thinking of the Future First

Foster had the counters, backsplash, and island made of quartz, opting not to use marble for functional as well as aesthetic reasons. “I love natural stone, but I also love my children, and didn’t want to be after them all the time about what they put down on the counter.” Single slabs were employed for similar reasons. “I cook so much, and I don’t want to spend all my time cleaning grout lines.”

Foster chose a suite from of appliances by Thermador because they were well-priced and offered an excellent panel system, allowing her to hide some of the bigger units. She is especially enamored of the range because it is both powerful and can go really low for simmering. Some of that country produce gets dehydrated in the oven, too. “It also has styling that melts into the background. It sits quietly there, doing its job beautifully.”

Although the project was all new construction, she did incorporate a piece of the old barn into the decor—a weathervane in the shape of a horse now lives on the windowsill. (She was afraid it might get damaged when they were re-doing the roof, where it used to sit.) “I really wanted it inside the house because it’s a nice connection to the history of our home.”