When you're on the market for a home----especially in today's wild housing market----it's fairly uncommon to find your dream house, move in ready, complete with every item on your wish list.
The more typical scenario is to find a home in a neighborhood/community/school district you like, then make your home into the house you always wanted. The clients who's kitchen is the subject of today's blog are doing just that!
After many years in their family home, these clients decided it was time to tackle a long desired kitchen renovation. Their current home is your typical house of the 1970's, chopped up into formal living room, formal dining room, kitchen, and breakfast area.
To modernize the space to function properly for how people in the 2010's live, we have some fun things in mind.
//current kitchen floor plan //
//planned kitchen floor plan //
The current kitchen (first image above) is quite cramped and poorly laid out. An in-wall oven in addition to a cook top take up double the space, there is little cupboard storage, and the kitchen desk---instead of acting as a functioning workplace---becomes a place for mail, odds, and ends to pile up and clutter the kitchen.
Since our clients didn't utilize the formal dining room, we decided it would be real estate better spent on the kitchen. In our plan, we open the space into the former dining room and extend the kitchen counters by a couple feet. We also add additional windows behind the sink, brining in loads of natural light and maximizing the view of our client's beautiful backyard.
// current kitchen; fridge wall //
// planned kitchen; fridge wall with stove relocated //
We extended the island----the new one is over seven feet long!---creating significant lower cabinet storage, and relocated a standalone stove to the center of the back wall, flanked in beautiful upper cabinets.
With a new shiny hood vent, this will create a beautiful focal point for the room. A breakfast bar on the peninsula creates some informal seating for snacks or breakfast, and we anchored the far right end of the space with two custom library shelves connected by an adorable window seat.
// current kitchen facing breakfast area //
// view from current dining room into kitchen //
// planned kitchen with former dining room and current kitchen combined //
// planned library wall with window seat in former dining room //
// view of library wall and breakfast bar from client's front living room //
Needless to say, this will be a complete transformation for our client's home. Not only will the new kitchen enhance the way they live and move in their home, but it will add significant value and aesthetic to their home in the event they ever decide to sell.
We love dreaming outside the box and rethinking the way a home can work! The most rewarding thing we do is take something old, reimagine it, and make it into a space that will improve the lives our our clients.
Do you have a home that needs re--imagining? We'd love to walk you through the process!
Renderings by our Friends at
Complete Flooring & Interiors (Grand Rapids, Mi)
Work with Lauren Figueroa Interior Design
LFID is a full-service interior design firm serving West and Southeast Michigan known especially for our Designed in a Day service.
We work with clients from Detroit, to Grand Rapids, to Holland, to Traverse City, and anywhere in between, and we pride ourselves on creating bespoke, people-centered spaces—because after all, people are what this life is all about!