Evanston Mansion Renovation Episode 19: Kitchen
Evanston Mansion Renovation – Kitchen
Renovations of a 100+-year-old mansion in Evanston, Illinois bring interesting opportunities to decipher the original intent of the kitchen architecture while modernizing a large space into separate uses following clues in paired windows to create a kitchen, breakfast nook and butler’s pantry.
Follow along!
- Episode 1 – Exterior and Foyer
- Episode 2 – Library and Family Room
- Episode 3 – Dining Room and Porch
- Episode 4 – Kitchen and Pantry
- Episode 5 – Stairwell and Landing
- Episode 6 – Primary Bedroom and Bathroom
- Episode 7 – Porch and Third Floor
- Episode 8 – Lower Level
- Episode 9 – Laundry and Guest Bath
- Episode 10 – Kitchen and Pantry After Demo
- Episode 11 – Primary Bath and Closet After Demo
- Episode 12 – Laundry and Guest Bath After Demo
- Episode 13 – Third Floor After Demo
- Episode 14 – Temporary Primary Bedroom
- Episode 15 – Entry Hall & Library
- Episode 16 – Primary Bath
- Episode 17 – Exterior Sconces
- Episode 18 – Powder Room
- Episode 19 – Kitchen
Transcript
Welcome back to the Evanston Mansion series. It’s been a minute since we’ve been here last.
As you can see, I’m standing in the kitchen. Last time we were here, there was fire brick behind me, there was exposed studs. We’ve now finished drywall throughout the house, which is great.
We had a big column right here. And it was very important to us to be able to open up the flow of this space and get rid of that column altogether. So column is gone, beam is in.
There’s a new column hidden in this corner right now.
We have so much space here to work with. How do you make sure that you have something that feels like kitchen, something that feels like breakfast room, and something that feels like a butler’s pantry?
We’ve been able to do that by building these walls, which is creating a very natural breakfast nook here. And the breakfast nook is in the place it really wants to be because it’s paired around windows that have the lowest sills in this room. There’s eight or nine windows in this room. There’s multiple widths, multiple heights, different sill heights.
And we’ve been working really, really hard to organize those windows in a way that the fenestration lust doesn’t feel so haphazard.
The former kitchen the range was behind me and we had an island that was round, two-story on an angle. Very, very peculiar. So we’ve chosen the direction of the floor to reinforce this axis.
There’s a window in front of me which is going to center on the refrigerator freezer, which is a tall element behind.
And we’ve actually relocated the range from where it used to be to where it’s going to be now on this new wall.
As we’ve been talking about pairing windows around different elements, the two windows behind me then are going to pair around this range. In front of me is the primary access into the kitchen. So the first thing that you’re going to see is this just beautiful, beautiful brass hood.
As soon as we finish drywall, the first thing that we do then is start on the flooring, getting tile down. Because as soon as a tile floor is down, then we install cabinets, stone counters, tile backsplash on and on and on.
The floor that was in here previously was a kind of a fake red oak laminate. We’ve opted to replace it with a 16 by 24 inch thick set limestone tile. It’s got really, really pretty veining in it and it’s going to actually be sort of a neutral palette that blends these two rooms together.
Because the whole space now is reconfigured. We’ve added new recessed lighting, and we’ve also added pendant lights above the island. You can see those are those three light bulbs that are above my head here. In the breakfast area, which is to my left, you can see a junction box hanging down. That’s going to be our chandelier over the breakfast table.
That wraps it up for today. I’m so glad that you joined me. And in our next series, I’m very excited. We’re going to be in the finish stage. As you can see, the guys behind me are bringing tile in right now. We’re going to wrap up tile. As soon as tile is down, we’re going to start cabinetry installation, and that’ll be our next look.