About
The first floor of this modest 1983 colonial was transformed into a Great Room by opening up the walls between the Kitchen, Dining Room and Living Room. Before the renovation, most of the time was spent at the small breakfast table in the Kitchen while the separate small Dining Room was ignored. The Dining Room was dark with one small window and separated from the Living Room by glass doors that served no purpose. We doubled the size of the Kitchen by taking over the breakfast table area and moving all that activity to the Dining Room where it belongs. The Dining Room did not get larger but the improvements make it feel twice as big by opening it up to the Kitchen and the Living Room with cased openings and adding large windows and a glass door to the new deck. There was some hesitation about a side yard window looking at the neighbor’s house but it has turned out to be the favorite window with mostly tree view and a pole mounted bird feeder (squirrel proof!) that is a constant show. We added windows all along the Kitchen counter so that every part of the counter has a view to the new garden deck and kid watching in the back yard. We removed the upper cabinets that were blocking the back yard view and moved all those items to a new tall pantry cabinet with full slide out drawers so nothing gets lost at the back. Glasses and small dishes were moved to the bar counter cabinet facing the Dining Room. The solid cherry boards at the bar counters came from a tree that fell in the contractor’s yard. The Kitchen desk area is out of the way but not isolated from the Kitchen activity with a bar counter open to the Living Room and a view to the front yard. There was also hesitation about the new side window at the dish washing/coffee maker area but it has also turned out to be a much used view to the vegetable garden and side yard gate/arbor and keep an eye on kids and pets. The brightest rooms have natural light coming from different directions so we often encourage clients to invest in more windows (and larger windows) than they expect and they are happily surprised by how much bigger the space feels.