An entire kitchen design inspired by a stove? Seems unlikely, but that was what happened when Sonya Kinkade, owner of Sonya Kinkade Design, planned her rural home near Ashton.
Winner in a custom home category at the 2025 Ottawa Housing Design Awards, the home is a quiet haven on a large, well-treed property dubbed Pine View Acres.
Kinkade and her family moved into the home, which was built by her husband’s company, D.E. Kinkade Konstruction Ltd., only two years ago, but the welcoming space has a distinctly heritage feel.
That’s thanks in no small part to the elegant custom home kitchen, which is framed by repurposed, hand-hewn barn posts and beam and anchored by a commanding 48-inch ILVE Nostalgie II range with unlacquered brass hardware that promises to acquire a rich patina as it ages.
“The range is the star of the show,” says Kinkade, a multi-award winner specializing in luxury interior design. “I had it in storage forever.” As to designing the kitchen around it, she says, “Yeah, that’s how I roll.”
Abutting the range is light-coloured custom cabinetry with Shaker-style doors built by Lauysen Kitchens. Kinkade opted for Shaker doors because they are “timeless” and an ideal match for the heritage ambience that defines her home.
A mix of woods, including oak, and varied stains in the kitchen create texture. “I always mix woods as long as it’s within the same family and they make sense together. It creates a lot of interest and again, age. It looks like one was applied one year and then 10 years later something else was done. I didn’t want everything to be brand new, even though it is.”
While a quick glance at the kitchen might not reveal it, because of construction considerations the area around the range is asymmetrical— an esthetic problem when our eye is used to symmetry. Her beloved range, for instance, is off-centre, as is the island in front of it. Kinkade resolved the issue through strategies such as insetting the cabinetry to the right of the range and keeping to a light palette so it recedes into the background, leaving the range and the wooden beam above it to create a visually satisfying symmetry.
The island achieves its own balance thanks to the wood cabinet to its left and the lamps above.
“There were lots of design changes,” says Kinkade with a laugh. “I kept changing my mind.” In the end, the custom home kitchen is a lovely example of what design wizardry can do with a challenging space.
Like the range, the antique, bi-fold French doors leading to the adjoining walk-in pantry are European and were part of an inventory Kinkade had stashed away over the years until she had a home large enough and appropriately designed to showcase them.
The pantry, which includes cabinetry by Laurysen, a smaller version of the kitchen’s apron sink and gleaming small appliances, grew larger when Kinkade realized she could steal space from an adjacent garage — another of her multiple design changes.
She uses the space as a second kitchen when she’s entertaining and doesn’t want a mess in the main kitchen.
While she can’t name a single favourite spot in the 2,500-square-foot home, “I’ve always loved our little pantry because of its ‘treasure wall.’” That wall features reproductions of old paintings, antique timepieces and kitchenware, and her late mother’s handwritten recipe for cranberry pie. “She died when I was young. It’s just handwritten, but I wanted it to be like that. A lot of the things in here are family things.”
Items from long ago enrich other areas of the home, which blends heritage with a contemporary open-concept layout in the main living area. Old books and clocks — the latter a reminder of passing time — line the bookshelves around the living room fireplace with its custom-made replica of a European mantelpiece and stone surround that has been over-mortared to give it an old appearance. A large black-and-white photo of her late father-in-law as a youngster on a sled, likely taken in the 1930s or ’40s and housed in a well-aged frame, also graces the living room, prompting Kinkade to say, “I like anything with history.”
The dining area includes a large, repainted cupboard that Kinkade discovered in Almonte, while the master bedroom sports an antique fireplace mantel that Kinkade has left, chipped paint and all, as she found it. “I liked all the years and years it’s been hanging around before me that gave it that character, and I didn’t want to touch it.”
The ensuite, with its claw-foot bathtub and antique French doors, speak of character and history as well.
“I love old English homes,” says Kinkade, explaining she’d long hankered for a heritage home but couldn’t find one whose character hadn’t suffered over-renovation or had other drawbacks. “So, finally, after looking and looking, I said, ‘Why don’t we just find the land, and we’ll build something ourselves that replicates what I want?’”
With its gleaming shiplap and stone exterior, generous windows, a three-season sunroom with walls of rough-cut pine and that magnificent range, the home wound up being exactly what she wanted.
