Everett cottage's kitchen transformed into a space-saving gem
Everett cottage's kitchen transformed into a space-saving gem
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Send a letter to the editorWhen Tina Guzinski bought her first home — a turn-of-the-century cottage in Everett’s Riverside neighborhood — she didn’t love the kitchen.
It was small, about 115 square feet.
It had teal laminate countertops and little else. There was no dishwasher, no vent over the stove and limited counter space.
There also was a comical lack of storage.
Drawers?
“I had two, and they were small,” Guzinski said. “I walked into this home and thought, ‘Oh, this kitchen’s got to change.’ It was totally unfunctional.”
Guzinski, however, didn’t change her kitchen, not right away.
She learned to live with it, adding shelving, a butcher block island on wheels and other strategically placed modifications.
Anxious about the cost and logistics of a remodeling project, Guzinski waited 17 years before finally, earlier this year, she hired Everett interior designer Chandra Sadro, who helped her rework not just her kitchen but also an adjacent utility room.
Their shared goals were beauty, functionality and a feeling of increased space.
They succeeded.
Not only does Guzinski now have 11 drawers rather than two, she also has more counter space (even with the butcher block removed), a dishwasher and a range hood (built into the microwave oven hung over the stove).
Now Guzinski has so much kitchen storage space she has room to display decorations on multiple shelves, including her collection of vintage rolling pins.
“Everyone comes in and says, ‘I can’t believe how much storage you’ve got in here,’” Guzinski said.
How did Guzinski, 46, do it (without expanding her kitchen’s footprint)?
Working with Sadro, she hired a variety of contractors, including Carter Construction of Everett.
Workers removed an old, unused brick chimney walled off in one corner of the space.
They put in new custom cabinets and sparkling new quartz countertops. They rehung a door so it could swing out into the utility room instead of awkwardly into the kitchen.
Remodeling the adjacent utility room might seem like a random addition to the project, but in Guzinski’s case, it was an integral part of making the kitchen work, Sadro said.
Contractors raised the floor of the utility room about six inches to match the height of the kitchen. They then put down matching hardwood flooring in both spaces to create sense of connectedness and flow.
Minimizing “floor-finish transitions,” as Sadro describes it, is an often overlooked trick, she said, adding: “It really helps make the space look bigger.”
Contractors also removed a large hot-water tank that stood nearly in the center of the utility room and replaced it with an on-demand water heater mounted on the exterior of the house.
Guzinski played up the historic look of the old house by choosing reproduction school-house light fixtures and oil-rubbed bronze hardware.
Contractors rebuilt the trim around the windows and doors to match the wide, Craftsman-style moldings in the rest of the house.
White painted cabinets, paired with creamy white backsplash tiles, seem to recede, making the room feel larger than its actual size.
In the 60-square-foot utility room, which features matching cabinets, the same effect is repeated.
When it came time to replace the back door of the utility room, which leads to the back yard, Guzinski decided to splurge on the ultimate punctuation mark: a Dutch door.
“It’s so romantic,” Sadro said of her client’s door, which swings open easily to let in summer breezes (but not cats).
Guzinski, who was so reluctant to remodel at first, is thrilled with her project, completed in July after about 12 weeks of work.
“It looks like the kitchen belongs here,” she said. “It feels like it’s a part of the home.”Join Us On Facebook
