Custom Kitchen Cabinets for Brookland Bungalows, DC

Brookland is one of the most architecturally coherent neighborhoods in DC. The foursquares, bungalows, and Cape Cods built between 1900 and 1935 have mostly intact original floor plans, with a closed kitchen toward the rear of the ground floor, a separate butler pantry in the larger foursquares, plaster walls, original fir floors, and ceilings that land between 8 and 9 feet depending on the build year. Pannello draws kitchen cabinetry for Brookland homes that respects this architecture: period-appropriate proportions, inset door profiles, materials and hardware that look like they belong to the era of the house rather than imported from a contemporary catalog.

The most common Brookland kitchen question is what to do with the original closed plan. Some owners want to preserve it: keep the kitchen as a distinct room with its own character, add storage and function without opening into the dining room. Others want to take the wall down and create an open plan. Pannello draws both. For the preserved closed plan, we use the original room dimensions as a design constraint: built-in pantry columns to the ceiling, a continuous counter run, open upper shelving where glass-front cabinets would look too dense. For the opened plan, we draw to the new structural dimension after the beam is set.

Plaster wall anchoring is part of every Brookland kitchen installation: we locate studs, anchor through the plaster into solid wood, and never anchor into the plaster itself. Original fir floors are protected with Ramboard and masonite for the install duration. Blum and Salice hardware, 18mm carcass. 3 to 5 week fabrication from final shop drawing approval.