Itzel & Gadiel have a beautiful, high-end home in Indian Lakes. However, their kitchen, despite being spacious, missed the mark on function in a lot of ways. For one, the original island was too small for the space. It was originally built with space for bar seating, but there is already a bar overhang by the sink, as well as a breakfast book right next to the kitchen. Storage was the best use for the center of this kitchen: not seating. We instead designed a much larger island, with tons of storage and workspace.

Secondly, we eliminated their corner pantry. In a corner pantry like this, by the time the framing, drywall, and internal walking space is accounted for, you end up with a lot of space that is NOT being used for storage. These clients love to cook from scratch and keep a lot of ingredients on hand. To maximize every inch of storage, we designed this kitchen to have a built-in pantry with pull-out trays.

Their kitchen also came with low quality cabinet hardware. The drawer glides specifically in this kitchen were cheap to begin with, and with anything at all heavy in the drawers, were very difficult to open. We always use Blum Full-Extension Soft-Close Under-mount drawer glides in all of our cabinets. They are heavy duty and built to last! Other custom storage options were a must for Itzel & Gadiel. Pull-out functions included: paper towel & cleaning supplies, spices, container storage, trash can, and baking sheet dividers.

Finally, the worst offense of all: those skinny little cabinets and counters on either side of the fridge. They collect clutter, and other than maybe some cutting board storage in the lower cabinets, are essentially useless. Our clients hated this part of their kitchen as much as we did, so we relocated the fridge and made a clear and usable counters pace. Other upgrades include space for a much larger cooktop and vent hood, pot filler addition, and integrated cabinet lighting.

Their hardwood floors ran throughout most of their main floor, so we preserved those, making sure our new cabinets either covered missing floor, or the damage was small enough to repair. To balance their dark flooring, we lightened their ceiling paint color and replaced their brown countertops with off white quartz. Itzel has blue decor in their adjacent living room, and wanted to tie in the kitchen by painting the island and hutch a coordinating blue.

Itzel & Gadiel trusted us to complete this project in time for the Christmas holiday, and that’s just what we did! Finishing on December 21st, they were able to move into their brighter and more functional kitchen as soon as they were back from their holiday travels.