Revealed: Brisbane’s 2023 Kitchen of the Year

A Bardon couple rebuilt an ageing Paddington home during the pandemic, doing so well they’ve scooped the coveted Best Residential Kitchen of the Year award in Brisbane. SEE INSIDE

Shane and Kim Boulter of BBH Projects have won Master Builders’ Best Residential Kitchen of the Year award for Brisbane.

A Bardon couple rebuilt an ageing Paddington home during the pandemic, doing so well they’ve scooped the coveted Best Residential Kitchen of the Year award in Brisbane.

Shane and Kim Boulter of BBH Projects took on the massive home renovation during the pandemic but never dreamt of entering any awards until their architect Alexandra Buchanan, of the firm of the same name, suggested they do so.

“We’re new to Master Builders, new to awards,” Mrs Boulter said. “It wasn’t really on our agenda at all until our architect said to us, ‘we think you’ve done a really, really nice job with this house’ and suggested we enter it, so we thought we’ll give that a go.”

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Part of the kitchen extends into the living zone as a bar area.

The stunning design included matching floor and ceiling timbers to keep the flow.

They were “pretty chuffed” to walk away with the Best Kitchen award on the night.

Mr Boulter, a second generation builder, runs BBH Projects with his wife who is qualified in contract administration and estimating.

“It was our first time building something of this calibre, quality and price range,” he said. “You do your best to get it right but you don’t expect to nail it first go.”

Mrs Boulter said “it was quite the risk because it was during Covid-19 times when the initial budget was just blown away”.

The couple challenged themselves to go further than they had before with the Paddington home, led by Ms Buchanan, as well as their senior designer Shane Willmett of Alexandra Buchanan Architecture and subcontractors including Garsden and Clarke Kitchens.

Built in seating at one end of the kitchen can have multiple purposes including overseeing kids’ homework and increasing the prep zone for larger family functions.

Shane and Kim Boulter of BBH Projects never thought of applying for awards when they rebuilt a Paddington home during the pandemic.

“Garsden and Clarke did an excellent job in executing it,” Mrs Boulter said. “There were a few tricky bits like the ceiling where the bar section is. But when you work with good people that’s a couple of days of troubleshooting and we ended up having a really good result.”

“What you do in the industry is choose the people that work for you and you don’t always go for the cheapest quotes.”

Mr Boulter said “we let the architects design all the interiors as well so it was one continuous line of thought. Everything in there has been crafted from the ground up.”

Five carpenters were on the project and about the same number of form workers to put up the enormous concrete designs.

“I had teams of people all over the place,” he said. “The house has a suspended slab because we had overland flow issues, so there was probably three months worth of work coming out of the ground – getting the pool in, getting the house raised, getting the slab built and all the retaining walls around the back of it. Once we got that slab poured, it took us nine months to build the house.”

A kitchen island was a must for the Boulters.

A major upgrade – how the kitchen looked in the old home before it was redeveloped.

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Mrs Boulter said the home had a “a really nice feel to it” like an oasis – which was crafted to tackle what was originally said to be “an active view”.

“That’s real estate (speak) for lots of cars go past,” Mr Boulter said, with his wife adding “we designed the house so you could leave that at the front door”.

“It’s so quiet at the back there. It’s really peaceful. You don’t hear any of the street noise. You don’t hear the neighbours. The neighbouring properties all care about their gardens as well, which contributes to this kind of insulation of sound around you.”

The kitchen of their stunning renovation project won Master Builders’ Best Residential Kitchen of the Year award for Brisbane, and will go on to the 2023 Queensland finals of the Housing & Construction Awards.

Master Builders said the judging panel was impressed with the level of detail, quality of construction, and craftsmanship on show in every project.

The home was listed for sale by Ray White New Farm Matt Lancashire and Josh Brown, and sold for $4.2m in July last year.

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Originally published as Revealed: Brisbane’s 2023 Kitchen of the Year