RESIDENCES :: RIDGEMOOR KITCHEN
It was already September when the owners of a house on Ridgemoor contacted me to help them. Their problem was an outdated kitchen that was too small for their needs, and in their view, no way to expand it. Just to make it a little more challenging, they needed the new and larger kitchen of their dreams finished by the tenth of December when they would be hosting their annual Christmas caroling event. They had already spoken to several contractors and none had offered a solution.

Looking around the areas adjacent to the kitchen, I thought I saw a way to make things work. To the north of the kitchen lay a poorly conceived addition that contained a side entry, a mud room, and, amazingly, a full bath which looked like it might have been transplanted from a Motel 6. The biggest obstacle I saw to capturing this space was an outdoor set of stairs leading to the basement, which was between the kitchen and bath. I asked them if they could sacrifice them, and after a brief discussion they agreed to lose the stairs.

After that the design was a snap. We tore out the kitchen and bath walls, which were adjacent to the stairs, supported the structure above with steel beams, enclosed the additional space we had captured from the stairs and combined it all—kitchen, stair space, and bath into a nice-sized kitchen. We re-purposed the mudroom as a powder room, and managed to accomplish the whole transformation in three months. Fortunately, the owners were excellent decision makers and in addition they placed no budgetary constraints on getting the space they really wanted.

As a starting point, I took them to my appliance dealer where a Viking stove caught the husband’s fancy, and became the focal point at the end of the kitchen where the old bath had been.   I designed beautiful traditional Maple
cabinets, had them built at a local architectural millwork shop and used a 48" Sub-Zero refrigerator with integrated panels to match the cabinets. To incorporate the owners' love of wine, a local ceramicist made accent tiles for their backsplash with labels from some of their favorite wines, and we included a built-in under-counter wine cooler.