After purchasing his 1912-built Tudor Revival, Peter Gregory waited several years to, as he says, “figure out how the house worked,” before tackling a complete remodel of the kitchen. Over the decades, it had undergone multiple renovations—most recently around 20 years ago. One of its few remaining original features is a beautiful wood built-in butler’s pantry.
It was important to Gregory and his girlfriend, Marie McMahon, who shares the home, to preserve the pantry and honor the home’s history while creating a functional kitchen. When it came to the look of the space, Gregory knew there was only one man for the job: master woodworker John Eberhardt. Based in Corvallis, Oregon, Eberhardt had built another kitchen for Gregory 15 years ago, when he owned a home there.
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“He’s just a genius,” Gregory says. He reached back out to Eberhardt in early 2022 to propose the idea of him building a new kitchen in St. Louis. Initially hesitant to take on such a large project so far away from his Oregon home and workshop, Eberhardt ultimately accepted the challenge.
“He respects me as an artisan and trusts me as a person, and I him,” Eberhardt says.
In 2023, Eberhardt flew to St. Louis to look at the house. Gregory’s goal was a “furniture-grade kitchen” that incorporated and updated the original butler’s pantry. He collaborated with Eberhardt on the specifics.
“John thought it needed something extra special and suggested that we coffer the ceiling,” Gregory says. They sought inspiration in other rooms of the house, deciding to replicate the style of the living room’s coffered ceiling. The effect elevates the kitchen’s entire design.
While the home’s exterior architecture is considered Tudor Revival, Gregory says of the interior, “St. Louis had a certain style at that time. It was a really rich city [that had] the artisans to do it, so people built a really specific style of St. Louis house.”
He wanted to honor that specific artisan style in the kitchen with Eberhardt’s woodwork and custom cabinetry. “Arts and Crafts and Tudor Revival both utilize quarter-sawn white oak, which is a particular way of cutting the oak that puts this fiddleback look to it,” says Gregory. “John’s first time working with quarter-sawn white oak was working on my Oregon kitchen 15 years ago, but he’s mastered it since.”
Gregory hired Mosby Building Arts for the construction, plumbing, electrical, installation, tile install, and overall kitchen design; Eberhardt worked closely with Mosby’s lead carpenter, Tim Hoskins. Eberhardt hand-built everything in his Oregon workshop, then put it into two large pods and shipped them to St. Louis, before returning to oversee the installation.
The team reconfigured the previously L-shaped kitchen into one large, rectangular space; the original butler’s pantry, framed in new millwork, made up one wall. Like the butler’s pantry, Eberhardt’s cabinetry is made with inset doors that allow the face frame to be its own feature. Replica barrel-hinge hardware was selected to hew as close as possible to the original antique hardware.
Gregory didn’t want flashy backsplash tile that would detract from the woodwork—the kitchen’s primary statement. Instead, he selected a simple, matte green tile from Michigan-based Motawi Tileworks that echoes the original tile in the adjoining “Palm Room.”
The countertops are made of white quartzite that resembles old marble with gray veining; it’s carried over to the restored butler’s pantry. For the two-tier center island, Eberhardt inlaid oak into the quartzite frame for another dazzling custom touch. An antique chandelier from France, purchased on Etsy and rewired by St. Louis Antique Lighting Co., completes the look.
Says Gregory: “The result is better than what I imagined.”
Sorting Out the Grain
Woodworker John Eberhardt’s quarter-sawn oak cabinetry and millwork is the true star of this kitchen. Explaining his process, Eberhardt says, “As one cuts the log in towards the center, you split these very thin arrays, and if you can split them just right, they become a big finger painting of sorts. You have to sort them out and say, ‘You don’t belong here, you’re going to be the feature over there,’ or, ‘This is going to be a match to this panel.’ Sorting out the grain is very much a part of it.” Taking in the kitchen, Eberhardt was careful to notice what was already there, and he worked to bring out the room’s special quality. The original butler’s pantry was a key element of the design, and he knew that his woodwork would need to complement it without replicating it. “That butler’s pantry was built on site. It’s probably pine. It has a real warm coloration,” he says.
