Kitchen Remodel

The layout on this kitchen was in much need of help. There is a beam cutting right across the middle of the upper cabinets that supports the upstairs exterior wall. The original design left the beam pointlessly exposed which made the kitchen feel as if it were divided into two rooms. The drop down desk to the left of the cook top only added to this design flaw. The only real counter-top space in this kitchen is on the penninsula to the rigt of the sink.




Another issue with this layout was the way the kitchen funneled into the dinning room. As you came around the penninsula you walked in between the oven and refrigerator into a cave like feeling area in front of the pantry.


By building a 3D Model of the kitchen we were able to play with some different layouts and virtually walk through them until we came up with an idea that would solve the kitchen's present design flaws.

In order to stay within the original budget, we worked around the protruding beam to make it seem purposeful. We put a false beam symetrically placed on the opposite side of the hood and then carried it around over the penninsula tying it into the structural beam.

In this photo you can see how much we were able to open up the cave this kitchen use to create. In order to do this we moved the doorway further into the kitchen and also widened it from 30" to 32" with an arch to match the rest of the home. The arch reaches up to a height of just under 7ft which gives this corner a much more open feeling. With so much more room to work with in this corner, we were now able to fit a 48" Viking refrigerator into the space and put the pantry on the opposite side of the kitchen.

Now that the kitchen felt more like one room, we built an island to take the place of the table that use to be in this nook. The ability to sit and eat in the nook was not lost because the island can still seat 3 on the back side and 1 on the end. This island feature added even more storage, counter-top space, the sink and electrical outlets.

 When closed, the turnings on each side of the cook top look like one piece. You can not tell that there is a spice rack behind each one.

Bathroom Remodel-Before and After

This is a standard track home upstairs bathroom. The customer wanted to get new cabinets but the bathroom required much more attention than cabinetry. The floor was so sloped that the door going into the toilet room (as seen in this picture) could not open all the way. This was caused by the use of cheap material and labor for preparing the floor for not so cheap marble flooring. This is a text book case of why it never pays to cut corners in remodeling. If it isn't done right the first time in the structural aspects, you will not protect the investment made in the desired finished product. Focusing merely on the end result, not the process as a whole, is what I call "Instant gratification."

End Results...

The layout we decided on was to separate the tub and shower. The bath tub was changed to a corner soaking tub and the shower to a steam bath. The steam bath could have been added to the tub/shower combo, but it is more practical as a separate unit. It is difficult to see in these pictures how much this bathroom was transformed but if you look in the mirrors of both before and after pictures you can get a much better idea.

The mirrors and panel cap on the wainscoting are steam bent to achieve the curve. I am not a fan of flexible molding. The tendency for cracking and non-tangent lines off the curves are very unsightly. I will use flexible molding where it is more practical, but in these two cases, especially the mirrors, I was not going to build them any other way.

  

The steam bath has 3 built in shelving units which keep bottles from being obtrusive to the occupant. It is extremely important that a Steam Bath be properly built. A steam bath should not be built like a normal shower, because your not waterproofing for standing water only, but for steam which does build up slight pressure within the steam bath when the steam bath is being used.