A Just*Grand Kitchen/Family Room Redo!

Time for another Before and After!  This time, I would like to show you the remodeling project I worked on with my wonderful Seamstress, Mary (see her work here).  It all started with a porch.  Our porch, actually.  After we remodeled our tired old screened porch (see it here at The Grand Project) Mary and her husband got inspired to spruce theirs up. A bit.  Remodeling projects tend to snowball and once that snowball started rolling, it picked up a lot of momentum and suddenly, another whole new room emerged.  While the builder was working on the porch project, Mary and her husband wondered out loud how hard it would be to make a little opening in the wall between their kitchen and their study.  Before they knew it, the wall was completely removed, relocated and space created for a large island and a new hutch! Things happened so fast that I have no "before" pictures of the kitchen wall.

This is really not fair to Mary--- half of her kitchen ended up in this room on a moment's notice!

 Here is a Before picture of the study and fireplace 

and the new wall space on the left side for the new hutch:

When we first started this re-do, I was convinced that the fireplace brick needed to be painted.  

There was some resistance to that idea and I so I suggested that we re-design the mantel, and wait until the cabinetry was done and I'm glad we did!

Here is the After of this same wall:

The hutch is in and the mantel is redone and pained white.

No hardware on the cabinets, yet, but Mary is working on that...

Here is the other side of the hearth, Before:

And now, with new cabinetry, the rebuilt mantel and a nice, big flat screen TV.

The new cabinets, counter tops and trim were all made by my pal, Ed.  

You may remember what he did for me here and here 

among many other projects yet to be documented...  

Anyway, Ed built these cabinets for Mary

and then he took the chunky, dated mantel below

 

 and added a new, deeper top shelf,

 some molding details and new brackets and I love the end result.  

Painted to match the cabinetry, the mantel pops against the brick and now we're all happy!

The new island is a great size - you can seat four and make cookies all at the same time!

Mary may have lost a wall, but she gained a whole lot of new storage in the island 

and a much more useable, family friendly space.  

The french doors lead to the wonderful new porch, a post for another day... 

The traffic flow to the porch is now much improved, too

and the hutch gives her some nice new serving space for both rooms.

We (now, you know this really means Ed, don't you?) also added some crown molding 

and trim to the soffit above the sink and wall cabinets 

 and painted it to match the cabinetry.

Here is an old photo of Mary's showing the old soffit from many years ago, before she had replaced her tile and counter tops.... 

 

Here is the new island and the soffit with new trim and fresh paint and all new lighting.

 I think this trick helps to disguise the soffit, that plague of 70's and 80's era kitchens.

 Let's talk about those pendant lights.  Mary loves them.  I needed to be convinced.  

The more I see them, the more I like them.  

They are Italian art glass and she swooned when she saw them.  

They tie the brick and the black and the whole room together- I guess she was right!

Now Mary has the best of all worlds- she has a kitchen with an island (Yay!) 

that's open to the family room and porch. 

And she can see her guests as well as the fireplace 

and the new TV from her island.

She gets to be part of the party!

So, one small kitchen plus one under-used study equals one Grand new room!

Linking to DIY by Design

Linking to Miss Mustard Seed

Linking to Savvy Southern Style