• August 28, 2024

Evanston Mansion Renovation – Kitchen and Pantry

Take a tour through the kitchen of this beautiful 128-year-old Evanston mansion before we begin the renovation process. The kitchen obtains its style from a 90s remodel, which will be addressed to align the new style with both the original integrity of the home and the owner’s preferences. Our goal is to salvage all of the high-quality materials while transforming the space to fit our new vision.

A smaller additional piece of this tour includes a look from the outside at 2 windows that give us clues that they are from a retrofit – not the original build. See that short on our YouTube channel here.

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

Transcript

Welcome to the kitchen. So you might say, what style is going on in here? And I’m going to say a style that’s not appropriate to the age of the character of this house. This kitchen was remodeled in the 90s. This was the look of the 90s at that point. Some improvements that we’re going to make here have to do with layout. The longest access is this way. Right now the kitchen is going this way. So we’re going to look at some sketches that might reorient the kitchen. Give us an island that doesn’t have quite such an unusual shape or have multiple levels to it.

We like to do deconstruction whenever we can. And while this isn’t my taste, it’s not the owner’s taste. The renovation that was done previously was done with very, very high-quality materials and we’re going to do our best to keep it all out of the dumpster.

One of the things that the owner loves so much about this space is that there’s eight windows in here. And there’s a bunch of different sill heights. There’s a bunch of different head heights. We have windows here that are behind cabinets that we’re going to keep. I’m standing on a floor that was installed over the original floor. It’s a laminate. So we’re going to pull that and we’re actually going to gut this entire space down to the studs. Everything is coming out. By the time we run new electrical and gas and plumbing and lighting in the ceiling, at some point there’s very little plaster left and it just makes the most sense to pull it. It’ll also give us a chance to address some of the trim on these windows. This trim, while it might be the shape of a historic trim that you would see, we have, you know, just plain sawn oak. So we get a lot of cathedraling and a lot of busyness.

You don’t see the trim looking like this in any of the other rooms. Our goal when we approach a project like this is to match crown, match trim and have, even though we’re coming from a space that you know has been remodeled, there’s enough pull of the pieces that were here originally that it all feels seamless.

So we have a crown that has a dental molding that, if you can see how tall these ceilings are, the rooms that we’ve been in previously, the crown molding has been proportionate to the size of the room. This crown molding is very, very small. And now for the elephant in the room. So we have a structural column. It’s holding up something. We don’t exactly know what. This column is in a very peculiar location. It makes a visual barrier between breakfast and kitchen. And when I walked in, the first thing I said when I met the owner was, I hope you’ll let me take this. And she said, I hope you’ll be able to.

 

Short Transcript

These windows that we see here are those two little windows that were behind the wall cabinets that flanked the cooktop in the kitchen. It just didn’t seem to me like the size of them was original. It just was too perfect, with like 18 inches that you want to keep above a countertop surface. So someone at some point added a secondary sill and did an amazing job.

We have a primary sill and then above that there’s a secondary sill. It’s a fixed piece of glass. We’ve never seen fixed pieces of glass in this house yet. Everything has been a double-hung. So we know that that was a retrofit at some point, but when you look at the job that was done with the secondary sill, the trim that goes around there and acts as a grip mold is the same trim that you can see on the dormers. It was so beautifully done and we are so excited to be this next generation of caretakers for this house that is just spectacular.