Kim and Peter live in a ranch-style house with their two daughters, Sarah and Christie.
From the outside, their home looks like the others in the neighborhood, but they had a kitschy kitchen that hadn’t been renovated since the 1950s. The room was so authentically old-looking that it actually had been used in several TV commercials.

Despite the family’s love of retro, the cramped, outdated kitchen just wasn’t cutting it any longer. The family members not only wanted a kitchen in which to cook for relatives and friends, but they also needed a proper commercial space where they could test recipes for their gourmet specialty-food business.

The kitchen was short on functionality and space. And because it contained an eat-in area, only half of the room was usable as preparation space.

So the first thing I did was rip out the eating area and knock down the wall between the kitchen and the adjoining dining room. This created a big, open concept area that kept the kitchen free for preparing and cooking, and the dining room was usable for eating and entertaining.
I wanted to update the space but still have it blend in with the rest of the house, so I decided on a design that merged the modern and the traditional. Because the kitchen was going to be part residential and part commercial, I divided the room into two areas: a family cooking area and a business test-and-preparation area.

In the family area, I worked in a whole wall with up-to-date double ovens, two refrigerators and tons of pantry space. Across from this wall I put in another preparation counter area in modern black quartz with a large sink and a storage area. I installed a peninsula-style counter with an integrated cooktop that included an automated, pop-up ventilation system.

All of the mixing and testing for the company recipes will be done in a different area of the kitchen, so the business won’t consume the side devoted to family and pleasure. I created a preparation area with a long, funky stainless-steel counter, a big sink with an integrated drainboard, and a stunning backsplash of glass mosaic tiles.

I then designed a little office nook with a desk and a custom-built dark-wood wall unit that contains open storage for all of Kim and Peter’s cookbooks.

To maintain the balance between the modern and traditional, I installed two types of cabinetry — white cabinets with recessed panels and polished chrome handles, and dark wood cabinets with moldings, leaded glass and classic cabinet pulls.

I painted the walls in several shades of soft blue, put down concrete-like material on the floor in a striped pattern of light and dark gray, and added accents in blues, grays and browns to match the rest of the room.

With the kitchen done, the dining room needed some adjusting to match. I kept the dining room table but put in some traditional chairs upholstered in a chic blue fabric, and added new light sheers and blue curtain panels.

I brightened everything up with recessed lights and a few chandeliers. I then added a dash of crisp chrome and retro-style ingredients, and the rooms were complete.
This outdated kitchen was hungry for an update. So I ripped out, removed and replaced, and now Kim, Peter and the girls can cook, entertain and run their business with ease.

Designer’s Choice
By Candice Olson
● Interior decorator Candice Olson is the host of Home & Garden Television’s “Divine Design.” For more ideas and information, go to www.divinedesign.tv.

source : www.azstarnet.com