A cook's paradise
When cooking is your passion, a remodel can be well worth waiting for

by Carol Blitzer

June Klein met her husband, Michael, in a cooking class. She hasn't stopped cooking since.

By using cabinets designed for bathroom use, June Klein managed to get the height she needed without having to create a completely custom kitchen. When it came to cooking tools, she chose the Viking Professional model with gas burner, below, and an electric convection oven.

But the modest home the couple bought in 1991 didn't quite live up to June Klein's cooking abilities. She wanted a room to match her skills.

The original home was built in 1945 in an area now bisected by Oregon Expressway. When the city created the roadway in the mid-‘60s, the house was moved to its present location in South Palo Alto, sandwiched between two others on a flag lot. The home grew to a three-bedroom, two-bath structure -- but with an outdated kitchen.

Working with Palo Alto architect Larry Kahle, the Kleins soon had plans to expand their kitchen, soundproof their family room, add an Internet-wired home office, build an outdoor fireplace and pave the patio to create an outdoor dining room, add storage area to the garage and update a bathroom.
Seeking the "next best thing" to a commercial kitchen, Klein chose a Viking Professional "dual fuel" model with gas burners and an electric self-cleaning convection oven. "All my recipes are coming out better," she says.

At 5 feet tall, Klein had some special needs. She wanted working surfaces she could work at comfortably. "I was sick of beating egg whites at shoulder height," she says. To hold down costs, Klein decided not to create a completely customized kitchen. Instead, she found bathroom cabinets that were perfect. Because they didn't come with the snazzy built-in tray dividers or roll-out shelves, she added one standard-height cabinet with a second sink at the end.

They also opted for the GE refrigerator rather than a Sub-Zero model, because it gave them the most internal storage space that fit into their wall space. They added filtered water that feeds into both the refrigerator and sink, and an instant hot water machine that cuts down on cooking times. They found room for a trash compactor and low-level storage for dishes and cookware.

A stucco fireplace is the focal point for a new outdoor dining room.

The Kleins’ kitchen flows into their family room, which has a raised ceiling and indirect lighting at the ceiling’s edge. Most of that floor is carpeted, with Italian glazed tile pavers placed near the sliding glass doors. Their paved patio features a new outdoor fireplace as its focal point and a trellis on which wisteria blossoms will soon hang.

Almost incidentally, the Kleins also extended the wooden dining-room floor a few feet and add louvered windows, creating a new feel for the entry into their home.

Wisteria will soon bloom, hanging from a trellis that forms a ceiling over the outdoor dining table.

Total cost for the project was anticipated to be $290,000, but came in at about $360,000. Klein acknowledges that some of her choices added to the budget: top-of-the-line windows with UV-tinted glass; hand-painted tiles in the kitchen and around the new fireplace; and the stove -- the $11,000 cornerstone to the whole remodel.

Klein attributes other cost over-runs to changes made to the plans after inspections -- adjustments involving footings, shear walls and dry rot. Others costs stemmed from things they added, including a catch basin, Napa Valley stone flooring (about $5,000) and labor for the stone. The Kleins did make some compromises along the way, using granite tiles rather than a slab, and pre-fab Questco maple cabinets, rather than custom built.

The remodel also included new copper pipes, a new roof over old and new wings, repainting inside and outside, insulation, windows and remodeling of a bathroom where the tiles fell out during construction.

Resources:
Architect: Larry Kahle, Metropolis Architecture, 900 High St., Palo Alto, (650) 326-1877
Contractor: Richard Guinon Construction, 3666 Glenwood Ave., Redwood City, (650) 556-9518
Photos by Robert Bradshaw