Last April, I was contacted by Diana to help her remodel the kitchen and 2 bathrooms to her family farmhouse. Everything needed to be completely gutted. Doors and windows moved, the floor taken out and leveled. You name it, it needed it. This project was a lot of fun and Diana and Steve were great to work with. I hope they enjoy their new home! I will be updating a source list for everything very soon.
THE KITCHEN
Diana wanted cream cabinets, dark floors and to bring the wood tone from the rest of the house into the kitchen. There is an existing oven with a large copper hood against a gray stone wall, which needed to stay. We worked with those tones to bring in the gray and copper colors. First, were the drawings. We needed to come up with a basic plan to work with. Second, was the mood board. Third, was the mock-up. I worked up a couple of options for the island. Option 1 was to build posts out of the wood and paint the island. Option 2 was to wrap the island in the wood. In the end, we went with a different option and had corbels made out of the wood, instead of posts. We also had to remove an entire wall that included 4 windows and a door. Diana wanted 2 sets of sliding glass doors, instead.
I thought it would be fun to see the process from start to finish for planning everything.
→THE INITIAL DRAWINGS
→THE MOOD BOARD
→THE MOCK-UP (For 3D purposes only, the items in the mood board would be added into the actual plan)
THE BEFORE
THE AFTER
→THE CABINETS + ISLAND
When we first met at the farm, I pulled out a tape measure to show how large of an island I thought they could have. The larger the better. We were going to do 10 feet from the beginning. We cut back for a while on 8 feet and ended up going back to 10 feet. We look at it now and think we still could have gone a couple of extra feet! The space certainly allows for it, but the flow would be blocked between the doors, so we did make the right decision.
→THE WOOD
The downstairs is planked in Wormy Cypress wood. It was very important to Diana that we incorporate this into the kitchen. I had to research how to find this wood and called several companies in Florida. Apparently, worms don’t bellow into the wood as much anymore. But there is a wood that is attacked by a fungus and leaves the same holes in the wood, called Pecky Cypress. I contacted a company in Florida called Pecky Cypress and More. We were in luck, because they also made custom corbels! It took about 15 stains, but we finally matched the color by mixing 2 together to get the look they wanted.
THE LAUNDRY ROOM
The washer and dryer used to be in the kitchen, so those needed a new home. The downstairs bathroom had a large vanity that didn’t serve much of a purpose anymore. There was a door that led into a den behind it. The den has another door off of the dining room, so we covered the door into the bathroom. There was only 1 problem. The window had previously been replaced with a new one, so the space between the wall and the trim wouldn’t allow for a door on the shelves. We turned that into a drying space for clothes with open shelving.
The space behind the door had a deep closet. Diana wanted to keep that, but because it was a custom size, we had to have our contractor make a custom cabinet. We ordered a door to match the rest of the cabinets. The contractors installed a pocket door to save room. We pulled the flooring through the whole kitchen into the laundry room to tie everything in together.
THE UPSTAIRS BATH
This was a challenge because it’s a very small space. We went back and forth deciding on a bathtub or a walk in shower. This is THE only bathroom in the house with a shower, so we had a lot to think about. They decided on a walk in shower with a seat. The area was large enough to accommodate for that. We had a ton of options for the niches, but the one that worked best for them, were 2 side by side. We needed a custom sized vanity to optimize the space between the wall and the toilet. Our contractor built a vanity, medicine cabinet and coordinating shelves.
*I dropped the ball on the before pictures for this space, so this is the only one that I have. The after pictures were also hard to capture because of the size and the lack of lighting.
