Star Kitchen: Damaris Phillips

Damaris Phillips and her husband, Darrick, recently renovated the kitchen in their 100-year-old Louisville house, but hardly anything in the space is new — and that’s what makes it so charming. The couple worked with contractors to outfit the kitchen with historic details, then they added tons of beloved personal objects — most of them locally sourced. “Almost everything is from a yard sale or Goodwill, or somebody in town made it,” says Damaris. Some of her favorites: her grandmother’s stew pot, a little green army man that stands on her LG stovetop (it reminds her of those who are serving), a set of hedgehog-shaped measuring cups (hedgehogs are her close friend’s “spirit creature”) and some hand-carved cutting boards that a family friend makes to raise money for charity. “Everything you use says something about you,” Damaris points out. “So why not support things you believe in?”

A few years ago, Darrick helped open a school in India and fell in love with the flavors there. During a visit last year, Damaris stocked up on spice blends. She stores them in glass jars in these wooden cubbies.

These bricks were reclaimed from local homes that were torn down. “The contractors who designed this house are really passionate about the architecture and history of Louisville,” she says.

Damaris collects old cookbooks, especially compilations from churches and Rotary Clubs: “They’re the real deal,” she says. She keeps them stacked on an old footed cast-iron pot from her mom.

Damaris loves her caramel-colored wood-lath backsplash; she thinks it looks like a bourbon barrel.“ It’s a beautiful backdrop for everything,” she says. The material was salvaged from historic houses in Louisville.