BEFORE
BEFORE
interiors that would flow into one another
throughout the ground-floor level.
Sun Design’s first move was to demolish
the wall between the kitchen and family
room. “In these older houses the kitchens
tend to feel small and tight,” Wedderburn
says. “It needed to be opened up.” Other
structural changes included closing off an
awkwardly placed powder room door and
moving it so that it would open to the renovated mudroom. As Sun Design project
manager Liz Lee recalls, “They had a lot of
doors off the kitchen. There was a garage
door, the door to the mudroom, the powder room door and a pantry door. When
we were finished the only door left in that
space was the one to the mudroom.”
While the existing kitchen offered
ample space, older cabinetry and outdated
appointments made it feel cramped and
dark. Sun Design enlarged the window in
front of the sink to provide more light and
ambience, as well as expansive views of the
private backyard. Fresh, white-painted
cabinetry and a white subway-tile backsplash keep things bright and sparkling.
While the renovation necessitated
replacing the existing tile countertops and
the stubbornly dingy grout surrounding
them, Lee could not deter her client from
selecting another potentially troublesome
surface: white marble. “We don’t recommend doing marble for the countertops
in the kitchen because they can stain so
easily,” Lee explains. “But she had a vision
and she really wanted it, so we went with
it.” The owner’s vision paid off: The result
is a classic kitchen in a timeless style.
Meanwhile, Wedderburn looked for
ways to connect the new kitchen with the
rest of the interiors. She found that an
open-plan kitchen/family room offered
INTERIOR DESIGN: MARGERY WEDDERBURN,
Margery Wedderburn Interiors, LLC, Vienna, Virginia.
KITCHEN DESIGN/BUILD: LIZ LEE, project manager,
Sun Design Remodeling Specialists, Inc., Burke,
Virginia.
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