Of all of the locations throughout the nation that designer Laurie Jones and her household have known as house, their present residence — a 1,250-square-foot condominium in a historic 1891 constructing in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood — is by far the smallest. It’s simply one-fourth the dimensions of the Indianapolis dwelling they lived in two homes in the past. (As serial movers, the household has lived in a complete of 15 homes whereas transferring from state to state because of job commitments.)
When the Jones household moved into the condominium in late 2019, they thought-about Chicago — with its world-class buying, museums, and eating places — as the house’s prolonged footprint, a mindset that softened the self-imposed problem to stay throughout the confines of such a small area.
Compound the cramped quarters, which Laurie shares together with her husband, Drew, and their 8-year-old son, Cooper (their grown daughter Sloan lives close by in Wrigleyville), with lockdown life, and the inspiration for a renovation was certain to strike.
“The outdated kitchen was high quality,” says Laurie, with a sigh. “But it surely learn flat to me.” It might have seemed fine-slash-flat, nevertheless it wasn’t actually all that high quality. First, there was the condominium’s ho-hum, builder-grade home equipment and the time-worn quartz counter tops, to not point out the copious kitchen cabinetry caked in crud.
Plus, there was the entire subject with the home equipment. See, again then, with eating places immediately closing their doorways because of the quarantine, the defective set up of their stainless-steel range (a lot of unusually burnt but undercooked meals!) simply wasn’t going to suffice for a drastic uptick in pandemic home-cooking.
What’s extra, the kitchen sink was solely bar-sized! At some point when Laurie stuffed it with water, as one ought to be capable of do, it crashed by means of the counter. Sure, that meant water went in every single place, even daring to trickle within the condominium unit under. Putting in new fixtures and home equipment was a no brainer — the concept for an all new search for the 150-square-foot area got here quickly after.
The kitchen’s saving grace was the east-facing morning mild pouring in by means of a captivating backyard window, authentic to the constructing. The pure highlight was there — it simply wanted a showstopper kitchen to shine upon!
The Kitchen Renovation in 10 Easy Steps
To start out, Laurie and Drew knew they needed to repair the home equipment. “I’m simply so sick of chrome steel,” says Laurie, who made the choice to go together with matte-white from the Café equipment line by GE, together with a double-range, six-burner range and a French-door fridge. The brushed, bronze knobs and handles add a classic luster to the area that’s echoed within the champagne-bronze utensil rails above the brand new, now-roomier quartz sink, a seamless match with the quartz counter tops.
If the brand new home equipment had been “a tough examine to jot down,” as Laurie describes, the reimagined sink space turned out to be a relatively budgetary boon. A easy backsplash of vertically put in wood planks from The Residence Depot changed chipped subway tile. Two open cabinets from IKEA break up the monotony of the cabinetry. “The kitchen was mainly a room of cupboards,” says the designer.
On the kitchen’s shelving areas, Laurie proudly shows lovely potted crops, candlesticks from Jayson Residence, and a small oil portray by her uncle. “I like to show issues that I exploit quite a bit, like my scrubber and pruning scissors,” she says of the beautiful instruments hanging from the steel rods. “I feel there’s magnificence in that.”
For less-presentable gadgets — surplus sponges, for example, or cleaners utilized in beneficiant quantities to arrange the once-grimy cupboard faces for a recent coat of almost-pink paint (Behr’s Creamy Mushroom) — Laurie had a flouncy, pinstripe skirt sewed to hide under-sink storage — and add a little bit of cottagecore aptitude.
To floor the kitchen’s newfound airiness and femininity is probably the renovation’s pièce de résistance, even when it’s meant to mix in: a lime-washed wall of skinny, brick shingles (extra on that right here!), hand-sawn by Drew on website so he might customized minimize round electrical retailers and the door.
The messy challenge — which utilized a pre-existing wall and was then coated with skinny, kiln-fired clay brick shingles — was an ear-splitting racket that was saved for the weekends to protect the close by neighbors’ workweek peace. “I nonetheless discover brick mud in every single place,” says Laurie, for whom pre-cut veneers — missing a tough, unpolished fashion — would have been fully inauthentic to the period. “I simply wished the wall to really feel prefer it’s all the time been there.” Beneath it, Drew additionally constructed a built-in bench with hidden storage for additional pantry elements, whereas a household relative sewed the patterned cushion overlaying from a Goal bathe curtain.
Whereas every member of the family is actually mirrored within the new kitchen — particularly within the very private gallery wall, pictured under, that features Cooper’s rainbow-hued handprint; Sloan’s cross-stitch of Mount Rose, a peak within the Sierras; and the lyrics from a tune treasured by Laurie and Drew — the area is unequivocally the area of the designer.
“It’s simply so fairly that I don’t thoughts cooking or cleansing. I’ll even watch a film on my laptop computer whereas I’m doing these issues. However the rule is after I’m cooking or cleansing, everybody has to get out,” Laurie says. “It’s my ‘me’ time!”
Thanks for sharing, Laurie!
Supply: Condominium Remedy
