The original carved wooden mantle and framing of the fireplace adds additional warmth and character to the living area in the lower level.
that island and I felt like everything in the kitchen needed to have some sort of symmetry. When you walk into the room, to the left you have a big fireplace and to the right you have the beautiful French doors and windows, both ends are just stunning. They balance each other well because of their size and scale, even though they are completely different things. I felt like the rest of the kitchen needed that same balance. From the stove, everything is symmetrical from left to right. I thought the island needed to have a clean line so that even though it’s so massive and so big, it’s actually very simple. It’s also super functional with drawers on the seated side. It’s so big you could fit four-to-six bar stools depending on the size of the bar stools and still have that drawer space and the cabinets below. It’s the hangout spot of the kitchen - it needed to be massive.
I don’t think there are rules anymore of what you have to do design-wise. I think that’s what makes our homes more personal and more lived-in is that every piece is specifically thought out and specifically for that room and that not everything has to match. I like the eclectic feeling of collected and curated instead of “we just went out and bought it all.” Q: The home has two original fireplaces with handcrafted woodwork. In the all-new modern kitchen, we see you painted the ornate woodwork on the fireplace a flat black. Why is that? A: That fireplace surround is not wood, it was concrete that had been faux painted to look like wood and it was really poorly done. When you looked at it from a distance, it looked like it possibly could have been a wood carving but
once you got closer you could see that it was concrete, and it was just a bad 80’s faux finish. Q: The home’s designer and builder seem to have taken great care when planning the home’s design into the hillside, many design details were well thought out in the early stages of building the home back in the turn of the 20th century. The new kitchen is close to tree- top level, with easy access to the large flowing concrete patio through the beautiful original double doors. We see why you moved the kitchen from the lower level to the main level. Let’s talk about the kitchen. It’s big, it’s beautiful and the view is so inspiring! You envisioned a huge center island in the kitchen almost from day one. What led to the design of the island? A: It is a massive island with three slabs of Calcutta quartz with a waterfall edge. I love
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