Kitchen of the Week
Kitchen Design
Kitchen of the Week: Minty Cabinets Transform a Dated Space
Enclosing a screened porch in Texas opens up the floor plan for a roomier dining area and more efficient cabinet storage
It was your typical situation with an old house. Amy and Mike Gennrich’s 1955 home in Austin, Texas, had its share of problems, including a tight kitchen with a lack of natural light, dilapidated cabinets with insufficient storage and an overall poor layout. “You’d open the oven and the kitchen was half as small,” says designer Justin Quick, who helped the Gennriches reconfigure the layout and take advantage of a screened-in porch to create a roomier dining area and a new window seat storage area.
After: Viewed from pretty much the same angle as in the previous image, you can see how removing the wall, window and cabinets over the sink and enclosing the screened porch created a more open feel. The porch became a more comfortable dining area. The renovation brought the kitchen and dining areas from 190 square feet to 400 square feet.
Amy found CG&S Design-Build after noticing that a lot of the photos she’d saved in her Houzz ideabook had been uploaded by the firm. After contacting the company, she worked with Quick and his colleagues on a design plan, which included moving the sink over a few feet, extending the countertop and centering the range on the back wall. “We expanded the footprint but didn’t blow it out,” Quick says. (See the before-and-after floor plans below for more on how the layout changed.)
The choice of the minty green paint color (Breaktime by Sherwin-Williams) came about by chance. Quick had randomly added it to the cabinets in his 3D computer modeling program, using it as a placeholder when he and his colleagues had meetings with the Gennriches. Later they tried playing with different cabinet colors but they kept coming back to the minty green. And it stuck. “I thought we’d have all-white cabinets, but when we saw the mint we thought it looked really nice,” Amy says.
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Amy found CG&S Design-Build after noticing that a lot of the photos she’d saved in her Houzz ideabook had been uploaded by the firm. After contacting the company, she worked with Quick and his colleagues on a design plan, which included moving the sink over a few feet, extending the countertop and centering the range on the back wall. “We expanded the footprint but didn’t blow it out,” Quick says. (See the before-and-after floor plans below for more on how the layout changed.)
The choice of the minty green paint color (Breaktime by Sherwin-Williams) came about by chance. Quick had randomly added it to the cabinets in his 3D computer modeling program, using it as a placeholder when he and his colleagues had meetings with the Gennriches. Later they tried playing with different cabinet colors but they kept coming back to the minty green. And it stuck. “I thought we’d have all-white cabinets, but when we saw the mint we thought it looked really nice,” Amy says.
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Before: Other problems in the existing kitchen included a fridge that stuck out too much and particle board cabinets that had become damaged from dripping water and wear and tear. “The layout was good,” Quick says. “It just needed to be rethought.”
After: While the footprint didn’t increase much, it did become more efficient thanks to better cabinet storage. “We put in a lot of drawers instead of doors,” Quick says. He also took the cabinets to the ceiling to maximize storage.
Before: The refrigerator wall felt visually and physically crowded.
After: A counter-depth fridge helped save valuable inches while more efficient storage freed up room for a beverage center. To the right of the beverage center is a new 20-inch-deep pantry cabinet.
Shelves on the end of the island hold cookbooks. “It’s a nice way to end the run of countertop,” Quick says.
Shelves on the end of the island hold cookbooks. “It’s a nice way to end the run of countertop,” Quick says.
The beverage station includes the microwave and a small refrigerator.
A stack of drawers on the island stores arts and crafts supplies. Amy owns Craft Joy, through which she teaches crafts to kids. Mike is a pediatrician.
Before: The screened porch included a picnic table and a storage closet.
After: A new window seat with built-in storage replaced the storage cabinet, and the rest of the screened porch became the new dining area. Amy got the idea for the window seat from various photos she saw on Houzz. “That’s my favorite part of the renovation,” she says.
The tall cabinets flanking the window include pullout drawers with deep storage. Upper cabinets hold infrequently used holiday dishes and party supplies. Each family member has a shoe drawer, and even the family wiener dog, Daisy, has her own drawer. In fact, Daisy has sort of laid claim to the window seat. She likes to lay on the cushion with her chin on the sill, guarding the house.
The glass door on the left leads to the carport.
A small seating area with two swivel chairs, just out of frame to the right of the window seat, replaced what was the former dining area.
The tall cabinets flanking the window include pullout drawers with deep storage. Upper cabinets hold infrequently used holiday dishes and party supplies. Each family member has a shoe drawer, and even the family wiener dog, Daisy, has her own drawer. In fact, Daisy has sort of laid claim to the window seat. She likes to lay on the cushion with her chin on the sill, guarding the house.
The glass door on the left leads to the carport.
A small seating area with two swivel chairs, just out of frame to the right of the window seat, replaced what was the former dining area.
Before: This floor plan of the original layout shows the compact kitchen and dining area, in the center, and the screened porch and storage closet to the right.
After: The new floor plan shows how incorporating the screened porch allowed for a reconfigured countertop and cabinet layout and a more comfortable dining area and window seat.
More on Houzz
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More on Houzz
See How Refaced Cabinets Brighten This Dated Kitchen
5 Trade-Offs to Consider When Remodeling Your Kitchen
Get kitchen design ideas
Find design-build firms near you
Shop for kitchen and dining products
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Kitchen at a Glance
Who lives here: Amy and Mike Gennrich; their two kids, ages 12 and 7; and their wiener dog, Daisy
Location: Austin, Texas
Size: The combined kitchen and dining area is 400 square feet (37 square meters)
Designer: Justin Quick of CG&S Design-Build
Before: The Gennriches felt the existing kitchen layout was too cramped. “We like cooking and having family over, and everyone would be in there and it was just getting too crowded,” Amy says.
The window over the sink looked into the screened porch, a space the family liked but felt could be put to better use. “It was kind of dark out there,” Amy says. “And screen porches get really dusty.”
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