“The kitchen is the heart of the home, but we want to have it clean,” says Cherie Poissant, a senior design/sales consultant for Boyer Building Corporation. “Who doesn’t want that?” Sculleries offer extra space for baking, cooking and keeping the main kitchen tidier while entertaining. Photos: Emily John Photography
Boyer Building Corporation takes us behind the scenes with the resurgence of a Victorian-era trend.
Fans of period dramas like Downton Abbey know all about sculleries—a secondary kitchen, traditionally used for cleaning vegetables, dressing game and scrubbing dirty dishes from the main kitchen. While sculleries fell to the wayside in modern homes, they are making a comeback as homeowners find that one kitchen is not always enough to prep, cook and entertain the way they want to in a world when the main kitchen often doubles as a gathering space.
“People are spending more time cooking and spending more time in their homes,” says Cherie Poissant, a senior design/sales consultant for Boyer Building Corporation. She says that sculleries are “exciting to have” for homeowners that love entertaining but want to keep their kitchens tidier. “It’s the best of both worlds,” she says.
Pezhman and Britta Roohani have been updating their 2006 home in Medina since purchasing it in 2023. Last year, they enlisted the help of Boyer Building Corporation to update their kitchen and create a space better suited to cooking and entertaining. “My wife loves to host and cook,” Pezhman says. “Everyone always congregates around the island.”
Poissant evaluated the Roohanis’ main floor and considered how they wanted their kitchen to function, asking about entertaining frequencies, the need for prep space, were there missing elements to the current kitchen and the like. After communicating with the couple about their home living style, Poissant presented an idea to transform their formal dining room and walk-in pantry into a scullery. “It’s all about how you want to use the space in your home,” Poissant says. “There are a lot of underutilized dining rooms.”
For the Roohanis, who admitted that they rarely used the formal living room, the idea hit the mark. A scullery would give them the space they needed to prepare food (and confine the mess that goes along with it) while freeing up the kitchen for entertaining. “It took a space that would not be used and created a prep area that we are in constantly,” Pezhman says.
At the heart of the Roohanis’ scullery is a large island for food preparation with storage on both sides and a beverage fridge. An appliance garage provides space to store smaller appliances out of sight and features interior outlets. And the single basin, undermount sink includes a glass rinser—something they installed in the scullery and the kitchen—which has already proven to be a worthy cleansing accessory. “This has been a great addition that we didn’t realize we needed,” Pezhman says. “They come in handy with all glasses but in particular [with] the wine glasses. We have broken many glasses over time because it is difficult to [clean the inside] of fragile wine glasses.”
In addition to a large pantry, the scullery features open shelving, providing 11 feet of easy access to items. Combined with the storage in the island, Pezhman says they even have some cabinets that are still empty. (How many homeowners can say that?) The scullery also has a second dishwasher, which is perfect for cleaning up after parties, and a double wall oven for times when recipes require separate baking/cooking times and temperatures. “The double oven was a must,” Pezhman says. He also moved a bar set he had in the basement up to the scullery to maximize their entertaining potential.
The two-and-a-half-month project wrapped up late last fall and, since then, the Roohanis have switched their cooking and hosting efforts into high gear. “We can both cook at the same time,” Pezhman says. “It’s been something we’ve unexpectedly used every day.”
Boyer Building Corporation
3435 County Road 101, Minnetonka; 952.475.2097
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