Notes on Checks from New Orleans
A wedding brought me to New Orleans again in March, and I was able to stay ay my favorite hotel, the magical Hotel Peter & Paul. Because all things checked have been top of mind...
Always Look Up! aka The Kitchen Refurb Part 1
It began, as so many great design stories do, with a whisper of a refurb–or in this case, Ethan, the young contractor renovating other parts of our summer house in Maine, taking down some ancient pegboard that my grandmother had installed in the sixties. In this small act, he uncovered some seriously scary walls in our little kitchen, thus starting a roller coaster renovation that would be truly transformative.
For me, after the pegboard removal, came the very obvious next step of making this small dysfunctional room into something we could love and be proud of like the rest of the house. In this case, an experienced interior designer and architect was absolutely called for, but because it was us, I plowed through and ordered new appliances, Home Depot cabinets, and considered open shelving. I moved quickly because it was already spring and I was on to tile and paint colors.
I traveled to Maine two weeks ago (where it is actually still winter) to check in with my mother and Ethan. I walked into the stripped down kitchen with no cabinetry yet, no paint on the walls, and the same very low ceiling. My heart sank; the kitchen looked kind of the same and new paint and cabinets weren't going to change much. As we all know, the transformation of a room begins, not always with what is visible, but often with what is obscured. Such was the case that freezing day in April.
I asked Ethan where the electrician was working from when he installed the new wires. He said there was a little attic above the kitchen. My heart almost stopped and my mother ,who knows the house much better than me, piped in and said "Oh yes, that’s an attic that we used to play in as kids and you get there from a little hatch in the upstairs bedroom." The immediate decision to remove the intervening structure and elevate the ceiling to a cathedral height was an obvious maneuver, injecting a sense of height and air that was previously unimaginable. Ethan took down the ceiling that Monday after I had gone home, and the pictures he sent me showed how, indeed, raising the ceiling had transformed this cramped little box into something altogether more glorious.
A lucky break and a stroke of architectural serendipity had unlocked the room's potential. All of a sudden, the renovation became fun and the real work of ordering wallpaper, fixtures, lights and maybe some old/new furniture began.
Stay tuned for our wallcovering choice (I've been eyeing our new solid raffia) and other kitchen decisions! The expanded walls demand a surface treatment of equivalent character.
Cheers,
Susan
- Tags: From Susan's Desk
