ADDITIONS

GARDEN REPOSE | STATELY COLONIAL | HEART OF THE HOME

REVITALIZED HEART OF THE HOME

BEFORE – Click photo to view larger.

After 25 years, our clients were tired of the cramped kitchen and eating area in their colonial style home.

The kitchen had one small window and dark wood cabinets. The refrigerator blocked traffic. A peninsula isolated the work space from the dining area, and a half-wall blocked the dining room from the family room. The only access to the yard was through a laundry room. It was like a series of capsules connected by what the owner called “a long, dark tunnel,” at our first meeting.

Our clients were looking for a brighter, more open space that would include a desk, a pantry, a beverage center and access to the beautiful back yard. They also wished for a sitting area, an island with seating and they wanted to reserve space for a dinette!

Our first design provided all these amenities within the home’s existing footprint, but only by converting the formal dining room into a more casual space. Unwilling to make that sacrifice, our clients chose instead to extend the kitchen with an addition. Our revised design retained the dining room and positioned the kitchen with a large island as the core of the new space, bridging the existing home and the addition.

A desk, a beverage center and a pantry flank three sides of the central kitchen space. The pantry fits into an angled wall that helps orient the kitchen and the island to the addition, which houses a dinette and a sitting space.

To create the addition we removed 18 feet of outside wall and supported the opening with a girder truss and LVL beams. To maximize ceiling height we had to overcome the challenge posed by plumbing that had been in existing soffits. We created a chase in the ceiling for the plumbing. This required cutting back floor joists and hanging them from a new LVL beam.

We extended the addition 14 feet, vaulted the ceiling with scissor trusses and incorporated two Velux Low-E skylights, walls of Pella Designer Series windows, and a full-lite door to the yard. This floods the new and old spaces with light. To avoid having to downsize any second floor windows we engineered a flat roof “pocket” into the gabled addition.

The client chose a hand-fired Shaw apron sink and a Moen Showplace Vestige faucet in Pewter finish. She continued the traditional look with five-piece flat panel cabinet doors and drawer fronts. The frameless cabinets were custom built. Both the cabinets and the wood pulls got a multi-step finish: they were painted, distressed and triple-glazed for an antiqued look. The rustic look was continued with variable-width rough-sawn oak flooring. At the windows we custom built a deep stool and apron to replicate the traditional look our clients wanted.

The added space and improved flow, combined with warm wood tones, light walls and light colored Marvelle solid surface countertops creates a spacious, inviting, warm and happy new space.

ADDITIONS | BATHROOMS | KITCHENS | LOWER LEVELS | RESIDENTIAL INTERIORS | WHOLE HOUSE RENOVATIONS | MORE PROJECTS