| Raising the roof beams
A coffered ceiling visually opened up the entire
kitchen
by Carol Blitzer
The old kitchen featured a dropped 'luminous' ceiling and
a small center island. |
Who would have thought a '60s avocado nightmare could be transformed
into the kitchen of one's dreams -- and mostly within the existing
space?
By lifting the formerly 8-foot ceilings to coffered heights in
this Los Altos Hills home, architect Bill Maston only needed to
push out the walls about 2 feet to create a new kitchen where the
owners could cook and eat. The 42-inch commercial cook top was lowered
a few inches, so the dad in the family isn't the only one able to
reach the burners.
Because the family loves to entertain, they needed two dishwashers,
but one is a Fischer Paykel stacked-drawer dishwasher that can run
half a load at a time.
A focal point of the new kitchen is an 800-pound plaster hood, suspended
from the ceiling and faux painted by Patti Linder-Dodd and Christine
Allan.
This view of the former family room into the kitchen shows
an old fireplace to the left and the vaulted ceiling in the
family room. |
Custom kitchen cabinets were crafted from wood distressed with worm
holes and dings. It wasn't until a coat or two of stain was applied
that the owners realized that some of the scratches really looked
like scratches, and needed to be sanded out and refinished, recalls
Laura Ferrell of Woodenwings Builders, who had to finesse the negotiations
between owner and craftsmen.
The fireplace was relocated on the opposite end of a breakfront. |
The forward-thinking dot-com couple installed a flat-screen computer
screen, from which they can control the stereo system throughout
the house -- and order groceries on the Internet. The cook can also
call up recipes on the Web and display them in lettering big enough
to read from a distance.
Most of the floors are hardwood, except under the eating area, where
they chose tile.
"The biggest challenge was to make it function in an efficient
way for the cook," says interior designer Christine Soenksen.
"We wanted to pull out of that big barn of a space a way to
serve them efficiently. It was really a space-planning challenge."
An even greater challenge was reconfiguring the spaces and thinking
through the structural work. "We put a big breakfront in the
middle that accommodates both sides (kitchen and family room). We
had to conform to structural realities," she adds. One thing
they didn't change was a pre-existing step down from the kitchen to
the breakfast area, but it took a lot of design time to make sure
it "didn't look like an afterthought or a mistake," she
says.
To create the coffered ceiling in the kitchen and family
room, the designer had to figure out how to reframe the roof. |
Goal of project/design challenge:
Interior was very dark, almost smelled moldy; goal was to open
up and create a kitchen/family room/eating area
Unexpected problems: Need to reframe roof, match exterior
brick work
# square feet: 1,680 square feet
Year home built: '60s |
Resources:
Architect: William Maston Architect & Associates, 384
Castro St., Mountain View, (650) 968-7900
Contractor: Woodenwings Builders, 1020 California Ave., Palo
Alto, (650) 856-4762
Designer: Christine Soenksen, 5425 Hillsborough Drive, Petaluma,
(707) 763-1129 |
