Updated country estate

This beautiful, 9260 SF custom-designed home was built over 30 years ago.  Since then, the way we think about our living spaces and how we entertain friends and family has changed considerably.  These days, it is rare that homeowners want to preserve their separate, formal dining room, and keep the kitchen hidden behind as many walls as possible.  While the walnut-paneled dining room was beautiful, it was dark, dated, and not open to any other part of the house.  The galley-style kitchen was worse—almost an afterthought.  (Or perhaps designed for formal dinner parties that purposefully kept “the help” separate).  Very little natural light was present in the space and the barrel ceiling with recessed light was little consolation.  A radical change to open up the kitchen and dining room and combine the spaces was in order to make the house better suited to 21st century living.   

Kitchen-Before

Dining Room-Before

Several plans with different concepts were presented to the client.  Each had varying degrees of opening up the wall to the foyer/living room area.  Note that there is a beautiful curved staircase as well as frameless windows to allow panoramic views in the living room.  The drawback of opening up the space too much is losing available walls against which to put upper cabinets and the refrigerator.  In the end, the clients chose to remove one closet in the foyer and open up the rest of the wall with three arched openings.  This allowed much better views from the kitchen area to the living room.  Although they’re still separate spaces, the flow between them is much improved, and the natural light is now better balanced and spread throughout.  

As-Built Plan                                                                               Plan A

Plan B                                                                                            Plan C

The kitchen boasts a nice-sized island where the cook(s) and others can gather and talk, dine, read, work, or watch television.  We added another large window in the dining room to balance the symmetry and pattern of the existing windows.  When standing at the island, or sitting at the dining table, the views of the expansive lawns are breathtaking.