by: Craig H. Guido, CS
Making your existing space feel like your dream space
doesn’t always have to involve a major renovation. Almar recently completed a
kitchen renovation here in Hanover, MA. But this wasn’t a typical renovation where
we demoed all the existing cabinets and started over.
Several years ago when this client needed more space Almar
also helped the navigate thru their wants and needs to create a unquite
basement space that could serve as both a play space for the kids and an
entertaining area for the adults without sactificing all of their storage
space. So when they were ready to tackle remodeling the kitchen Almar was glad
to help again.
In this 1990’s Colonial there were some features of the
kitchen that were fine, the basic layout of the cabinet placement and some of
the actual cabinet units themselves were in perfectly good condition and the
homeowner liked them well enough. What she didn’t like was the limited storage
space and the awkward island that was not really good for cooking prep and made
the kitchen hard to navigate, and the out dated Formica countertop which was in
rough shape.
Almar’s solution was to leave the existing cabinets as they
were, remove the existing countertop, repurpose some of the cabinets in the
island to make a peninsula instead leaving space for a beverage fridge, and
then adding a bank of cabinets in the eating area.
By removing the existing island and creating a new peninsula
we were able to open the floor space up, and create a defined kitchen and
eating area. The new peninsula also gave added cooking prep space.
We then installed a new Granite countertop. On the new
peninsula we overhung the countertop to create both an extra-large prep area,
and a place for stools for countertop dinning.
We were able to fill in the existing hardwood floor with new
oak and refinished the whole room so it looked uniform.
For the new pantry area we installed new Black Heritage
Cabinets by Huntwood Industries. The black offset the white cabinets in the
main kitchen area and provided a beautiful contrast that in not obtrusive to
the eating area, and coordinates well with the table. The floor to ceiling cabinets are split to allow for extra storage and feature pull out draws and soft close hardware. We also included one cabinet unit that is not split in order to store tall items like brooms close at hand, but with all matching doors everything from the exterior looks uniform.
So this is one example on how you can redo your existing
space without taking on an overwhelming project if there are aspects of your
kitchen you already like.
