It's a kitchen-and-more - kitchen remodeling

Sunset, Feb, 1988

It's a kitchen-and-more

The friendliest room in the house is a product of evolution. It started as what we used to call the kitchen, but now it has grown to become more of a gathering spot where family and guests can eat, sit, relax, watch or help with meal preparation, and enjoy being together.

On these 10 pages, we show nine expanded Western kitchens that incorporate sitting and eating areas--and, in a few examples, elements from a family room: fireplaces, library walls, stereo and television centers, and comfortable couches and chairs.

All of these rooms share an informal atmosphere that celebrates food, family, and friends. Out of necessity, the cook has been brought back into the center of attention --because, in these busy times of two-income households, the expanded kitchen also is the logical gathering place for those compressed hours between work and sleep. As one homeowner puts it, "When I get home from work, it seems I have to spend most of my time in the kitchen, and I refuse to feel cut off from my family.'

These new-style kitchens are also space efficient. It's as if a one-room cabin had been constructed in the middle of the house--there's less and less need for separate living and dining rooms. Instead, their functions overlap around the kitchen. In all of our examples, interior walls were removed or space was added to make the kitchens more expansive.

In our cover house, three separate rooms became one

The walls came down between a kitchen, family room, and attached garage to create the 47-foot-long space at Sue and Mark Morris's house in Tiburon, California. Although the remodel works within the existing shell of the house, new windows and glass doors to the rear garden make the room seem bigger and brighter.

"It completely changed how we use our home. We spend all of our time here,' say the owners of the two-level room.

In the upper kitchen and eating areas, the warm tones of the Mexican paver tiles and the maple top of a 10-foot-long island add a unifying richness.

The 15-inch change in level occurs along the former wall between house and garage. The carpeted lower area now functions as family and game room. A low, two-sided bookcase and a fireplace imply a separation of space without blocking views. Once part of the wall, the fireplace has been wrapped in a shell of gypsum board. Its angled corners and the brass-plated chimney surround add distinctive form and metallic sheen that echo the glass-shaded lights above the island.

San Francisco architect Kenneth Kurtzman, of Kurtzman and Kodama, Inc., teamed with his wife, interior decorator Caryl Kurtzman, on the remodel.

A winner from the AIA-Sunset Western Home Awards program

From a dark, dingy, low-ceilinged complex of rooms, Penny and Greg Gallo's expanded kitchen grew outward and upward. Now lofty and bright, the richly detailed room was conceived as one space with different facets: eating alcove, family room with library wall, office area, and long kitchen. Changes in ceiling planes and lighting delineate each area within the room, but the repetition of off-white walls, white-stained wood, and a quarry-tile floor give it unity.

Designed by Cody Associates of Palo Alto, California, the award-winning remodel strikes a balance between natural and artificial lighting. Above a soffit ringing the room are small end windows, clerestory and roof windows, and skylights. The soffit fixtures direct light up and down. Slender horizontal windows fit between wall cabinets and the countertop for additional daylighting and garden views. The fixed windows in the popped-out dining alcove are really standard glass-paneled doors set between posts.

Opposite the kitchen, a 12-foot-high library wall houses books, television and stereo equipment, a fireplace (with wood storage below), and a rolling ladder for access to the highest shelves.

More walls come out in Portland

For a busy mother with young children, an attached family area lets her keep an eye on them while she prepares meals. That's what taking out the walls between rooms allowed in the house shown above.

Architect Jerry Ward turned a complex of three small rooms into one that combines dining nook, family area, and updated kitchen. Incorporating a 10 1/2-foot-wide storage room brought light and garden views into a kitchen that had once been closed off to the outside. A 13-foot-long counter, a change in floor material, and a deep overhead beam separate the two zones.

On the other side of the counter is a 13-by 13-foot space that is half kitchen, half breakfast nook. A diagonally running island divides the tile-floored room and helps direct traffic to the family area.

At one end of this kitchen, a slender new family room

The most-used room in Mary Lee Hunter and Scot Rybar's house combines a new family area and an old kitchen. A hillside that sloped down toward the house meant that there was only one place to expand the kitchen: the narrow corridor between house and hill. Because of the slope, the addition had to be three steps up from the kitchen's floor level--but Rushton/Chartock Architects of Fairfax, California, turned the narrow transition space into a focal point, as you see at right.