Search results for "Drive traffic" in Home Design Ideas

This centrally located intersection to a main thoroughfare a block away was a concern because of the corner lot visibility issue for cars making a turn driving in either direction. The Quince tree bloomed annually for just a short time and was originally planted by the prior home owners decades ago. Keeping it maintained to a height of 4’ maximum, dictated for safety reasons, was still obstructing and limiting the visibility of oncoming traffic at this busy intersection.
The existing roses planted in the same space as the Quince were a perfect backdrop to the new perennials and annuals planted to paint this corner with flowers. The project also included expanding the beautification to both corner areas in coordination with several other planting areas already seasonally updated on the property. With the Redwood Tree as a focal point and Roses, Daphnes, Iris, Azaleas, Fuchsias, Hydrangeas and Camilias highlighting the planting beds the addition of color, including around the driveway and side entrance, transformed the entire space.
Painting With Flowers Is Adding Beauty to Benefit Homeowners & Neighbors!
Kim Beber

Discover how premium light-filtering materials and smart-home automation can secure street-level entryway glass without losing natural daylight.
Choosing the right window treatments for a home's front entrance is one of the most challenging design decisions a homeowner can face. The front door is the focal point of a home's curb appeal, often featuring expansive glass panels or side-by-side double doors designed to make a grand architectural statement.
During the day, these large glass features are an asset, flooding entryways and foyers with beautiful natural daylight. However, for homes situated on busy local roads or highly trafficked street-level lots, the dynamic completely changes once the sun goes down.
The moment interior lights are switched on in the evening, a stark contrast is created with the dark outdoors. This creates a severe privacy issue, leaving the entire foyer completely exposed to passing traffic and pedestrians. Finding a solution that delivers absolute evening privacy without permanently plunging the front entrance into darkness during the day requires understanding how modern window treatment materials and operating systems interact.
Light-Filtering vs. Blackout Fabrics
The first step in solving street-level privacy is selecting the correct fabric type. Many homeowners mistakenly assume they need heavy, opaque blackout shades to secure their home from outside eyes at night. While blackout fabrics certainly block 100% of the view, they also block 100% of the natural daylight during the day, forcing you to constantly raise and lower the shades just to see inside your own foyer.
A more effective approach for entryways utilizes premium light-filtering materials. These specialized fabrics are engineered with a precise, tight weave that operates on the principles of directional light and optical density.
Daytime Functionality: When the sun is shining outside, the exterior light levels are significantly higher than the interior light levels. The light-filtering fabric diffuses the intense, direct sunlight into a soft, ambient glow throughout the entryway. This keeps the home bright, eliminates harsh glares, and protects interior hardwood flooring, paint, and trim from damaging UV rays.
Night-Time Functionality: At night, the lighting dynamic reverses. The interior foyer lights make the inside bright, while the outside is dark. Because of the specialized tight weave, the fabric blocks the transmission of clear shapes and details. To a person standing out on the street or driving by on a busy road, the view inside is completely obstructed, delivering total privacy when the family is home for the evening.
Challenges of Front Door Installations
Securing privacy for a double wide front entrance introduces unique structural hurdles that standard windows do not face. Traditional blinds with hanging cords or manual pull chains are poorly suited for front doors. They disrupt the clean architectural lines of a grand foyer, create a safety hazard, and can easily get tangled or damaged when the doors are opened and closed.
The window treatments must be mounted high and wide enough above the door trim to ensure that the front doors can swing open and close freely without ever catching on the fabric or the lower hem bar.
How We Applied These Principles in Sherrills Ford, NC
Applying these exact educational principles to real-world homes is what Cole and I do every day at Bloomin' Blinds of North Charlotte. We recently worked with a homeowner in Sherrills Ford whose beautiful new construction property sat on a highly trafficked road. They loved their double wide front door entrance but felt entirely too exposed to the street at night.
We brought our mobile showroom directly to their driveway. This allowed us to hold up premium light-filtering fabric samples directly against their entryway glass, matching the materials perfectly to their home's natural lighting, interior paint, and trim before making a single cut.
To solve their street-level privacy issue, we custom-built and installed two matching light-filtering roller shades, mounting them flawlessly side-by-side above the front door frame. To keep the home’s interior design completely cohesive, we carried the exact same style to the back of the house, installing a matching single roller shade on the rear door.
Smart Home Window Automation at Your Fingertips
Because entryway windows can be tall and awkward to reach manually, our family team integrated advanced smart-home motorization into this Sherrills Ford project.
Beyond the convenience of a handheld remote control, these automated roller shades feature seamless Wi-Fi integration. The homeowners can control their privacy through a dedicated smartphone app or link the system directly to their existing voice-activated smart home networks, including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple HomeKit.
This allows for complete hands-free window automation. The clients can program custom daily routines—such as setting the front entry shades to automatically lower exactly at sunset—or simply use a voice command to secure the foyer instantly from the comfort of the couch.

The interior of this single family residential home was in need of a remodel. The space was enhanced aesthetically, re-worked for better functionality, and opened up for more natural light and space. The Key areas of focus were the kitchen, master bathroom, and master walk in closet. These areas were most changed architecturally. The spaces we reconfigured to make them more user friendly, adding storage and better foot traffic paths. A wall was removed that divided the kitchen and the living space providing better lighting and an open concept peninsula. The kitchen layout was also re-worked moving the refrigerator, stove, and sink to provide a better configuration for cooking and entertaining. The rest of the home was remodeled to coordinate with the finishes and selections of the master bath and kitchen.
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FOR THE HOME AND MORE is excited to announce that we are participating in the staging of a model home for the new Narrow Passage neighborhood located in Davidson, NC. This new development will be the feature neighborhood for the Southern Living show houses in the Spring of 2020.
We're using this as a great opportunity to connect with customers and new home owners in Davidson, Cornelius & Lake Norman areas to drive additional traffic to the store. We've had many customers from these areas that visited the former BLACKLION Huntersville/Davidson/Lake Norman store in the past and this is a great way for us to stay connected with the community.
These drapery panels are available in any length and any top style.

A complete kitchen and powder room remodel in Herndon, Virginia, designed around two clear priorities: open up the kitchen to the rest of the main level, and create an experience that felt warm and timeless rather than trendy.
The original layout had a wall separating the kitchen from the dining room and an awkward fridge wall that limited both storage and traffic flow. Our solution involved removing the dividing wall (confirmed non-load-bearing), tightening the new dining room opening to 66 inches, and extending the fridge wall 25 inches into the kitchen to create a proper full-height pantry run. The result is a kitchen that breathes — open to the dining and living areas, with clear sight lines from the island to the bay windows at the far end.
Design Approach
The clients came in knowing they didn't want white. They didn't want navy. They wanted something with real wood character — the kind of finish that ages well and looks more like furniture than stock kitchen cabinetry. Cherry was the answer to that question.
We anchored the room around contrast: warm cherry cabinetry against clean white walls and white quartz, black hardware grounding the cherry's warmth, and a single waterfall island acting as the architectural focal point. Stainless appliances, brushed gold pendant accents, and the herringbone hardwood floor pull the room together without any one element shouting for attention.
The Cabinetry
Medallion Gold Line Sonoma Cappuccino — a stained cherry finish that catches light differently throughout the day. All-plywood box construction, solid wood doors and drawer fronts, soft close everywhere, US-made with a lifetime warranty. Four pull-out drawers built into the pantry bottoms keep the deep storage actually usable rather than a black hole.
Cabinet hardware is Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in flat black — 40 pulls across drawers and doors, plus three longer pulls on the 36-inch base drawers. The black was a deliberate decision: with cherry and stainless already providing warm and cool tones, brass or gold would have been one warm tone too many. Black grounds the cabinetry and gives the kitchen its architectural definition.
The Island and Countertops
MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold quartz throughout — perimeter counters, island, waterfall ends, and the powder room. The Gold variant has subtle warm veining that pairs with cherry where cooler whites would have fought the wood tone.
The island gets a full waterfall edge — slabs book-matched, miters precise, the finished edge essentially seamless. Treating the island as architectural sculpture rather than just functional storage. The black undermount farmhouse-style sink ties back to the hardware throughout the rest of the kitchen.
The Backsplash
MSI Metro Gold tile — small format white and gold tiles in a herringbone-adjacent pattern with intermittent gold accents. Full height, continuous behind the floating shelves and behind the hood.
Four custom floating shelves are spaced above a 3-inch countertop ledge: first shelf 18 inches above the ledge, second shelf 9 inches above that, third 18 inches above the second. The shelves are stained to match the cabinetry. The backsplash continues behind the shelves and behind the hood, so the wall reads as a continuous textured surface that the shelves and hood float in front of.
The Appliances
This is a serious cooking kitchen. The clients chose a 48-inch Wolf gas range, a Sub-Zero built-in refrigerator integrated into the cherry cabinet wall, a Wolf microwave drawer in the island base, and a Bosch dishwasher. For ventilation, we installed a 1200 CFM hood paired with a make-up air system to balance the negative pressure that hood pulls. New ducting was routed through the exterior siding on the side of the house.
The Flooring
MSI engineered hardwood throughout the entire main level — approximately 800 square feet — installed in a Bramlett herringbone pattern. Herringbone adds roughly 15-20 percent to material and labor costs because of the angled cuts and waste factor, but the result is a floor that reads as more considered and luxurious than standard plank flooring. Finished with 4.5-inch white wood baseboards throughout.
The Powder Room
A small room with a big personality. The clients chose a deep blue and teal scallop pattern wallpaper (client-supplied, we installed) and paired it with the same Sonoma Cappuccino cherry vanity used in the kitchen — material continuity between the spaces.
Powder room countertop is the same MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold quartz from the kitchen with a rectangular white undermount sink. Hardware on the powder room vanity is Top Knobs Riverside in honey bronze rather than the kitchen's flat black — the warm bronze pulls the brass tones from the faucet into the millwork and complements the wallpaper. New sconce, kept the existing toilet (refinishing or replacing a working toilet is wasted money in a powder room remodel), and a Panasonic Whisper Green exhaust fan.
Project Specs
Location: Herndon, Virginia
Project type: Combined kitchen and powder room remodel
Project duration: Approximately 4 to 6 weeks
Style: Transitional, Modern Farmhouse, Warm Wood Contemporary
Color palette: Cherry, white, black, brushed gold, deep blue (powder room)
Materials
Cabinetry (kitchen and powder room): Medallion Gold Line Sonoma Cappuccino cherry, Shaker-style, all-plywood box construction, lifetime warranty
Kitchen hardware: Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in flat black (TK1014BLK and TK1017BLK)
Powder room hardware: Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in honey bronze (TK1012HB)
Counter tops: MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold Quartz, pencil edge, waterfall island
Backsplash: MSI Metro Gold tile, full height
Floating shelves: 4 custom shelves at 48" by 9", stained to match cabinets
Range: 48-inch Wolf gas range
Refrigerator: Sub-Zero built-in
Microwave: Wolf microwave drawer (island base)
Hood: 1200 CFM with make-up air system
Kitchen sink: Kohler farmhouse-style, 36-inch base, black
Kitchen faucet: Brizo (homeowner-supplied)
Flooring: MSI engineered hardwood in Bramlett herringbone pattern, approximately 800 sq ft
Baseboards: 4.5-inch white wood throughout
Powder room wallpaper: Client-supplied scallop pattern in blues and teals
Powder room exhaust fan: Panasonic Whisper Green
Paint: Benjamin Moore
Designed and built by My Kitchen and Bath out of our Herndon showroom at 285 Sunset Park Drive. We've been designing and building kitchens, bathrooms, and full home renovations across Northern Virginia and the DMV since 1994.

This centrally located intersection to a main thoroughfare a block away was a concern because of the corner lot visibility issue for cars making a turn driving in either direction. The Quince tree bloomed annually for just a short time and was originally planted by the prior home owners decades ago. Keeping it maintained to a height of 4’ maximum, dictated for safety reasons, was still obstructing and limiting the visibility of oncoming traffic at this busy intersection.
The existing roses planted in the same space as the Quince were a perfect backdrop to the new perennials and annuals planted to paint this corner with flowers. The project also included expanding the beautification to both corner areas in coordination with several other planting areas already seasonally updated on the property. With the Redwood Tree as a focal point and Roses, Daphnes, Iris, Azaleas, Fuchsias, Hydrangeas and Camilias highlighting the planting beds the addition of color, including around the driveway and side entrance, transformed the entire space.
Painting With Flowers Is Adding Beauty to Benefit Homeowners & Neighbors!
Kim Beber

The detached garage required a driveway across the lawn and we installed Stabiligrid recycled plastic grids for a driveable lawn. Here you can see the grids have completely reestablished into lawn. The grids keep the crown of the grass plants from getting crushed from vehicular traffic so the grass doesn't die and the site doesn't get muddy or mushy. We maintain this site with our organic based compost teas (called BeeSafe) to keep the grass healthy naturally instead of using chemical fertilizers. Bacterial-dominant lawns are much thicker and happier in our Western WA forests, and can withstand shade better as well.

Discover how premium light-filtering materials and smart-home automation can secure street-level entryway glass without losing natural daylight.
Choosing the right window treatments for a home's front entrance is one of the most challenging design decisions a homeowner can face. The front door is the focal point of a home's curb appeal, often featuring expansive glass panels or side-by-side double doors designed to make a grand architectural statement.
During the day, these large glass features are an asset, flooding entryways and foyers with beautiful natural daylight. However, for homes situated on busy local roads or highly trafficked street-level lots, the dynamic completely changes once the sun goes down.
The moment interior lights are switched on in the evening, a stark contrast is created with the dark outdoors. This creates a severe privacy issue, leaving the entire foyer completely exposed to passing traffic and pedestrians. Finding a solution that delivers absolute evening privacy without permanently plunging the front entrance into darkness during the day requires understanding how modern window treatment materials and operating systems interact.
Light-Filtering vs. Blackout Fabrics
The first step in solving street-level privacy is selecting the correct fabric type. Many homeowners mistakenly assume they need heavy, opaque blackout shades to secure their home from outside eyes at night. While blackout fabrics certainly block 100% of the view, they also block 100% of the natural daylight during the day, forcing you to constantly raise and lower the shades just to see inside your own foyer.
A more effective approach for entryways utilizes premium light-filtering materials. These specialized fabrics are engineered with a precise, tight weave that operates on the principles of directional light and optical density.
Daytime Functionality: When the sun is shining outside, the exterior light levels are significantly higher than the interior light levels. The light-filtering fabric diffuses the intense, direct sunlight into a soft, ambient glow throughout the entryway. This keeps the home bright, eliminates harsh glares, and protects interior hardwood flooring, paint, and trim from damaging UV rays.
Night-Time Functionality: At night, the lighting dynamic reverses. The interior foyer lights make the inside bright, while the outside is dark. Because of the specialized tight weave, the fabric blocks the transmission of clear shapes and details. To a person standing out on the street or driving by on a busy road, the view inside is completely obstructed, delivering total privacy when the family is home for the evening.
Challenges of Front Door Installations
Securing privacy for a double wide front entrance introduces unique structural hurdles that standard windows do not face. Traditional blinds with hanging cords or manual pull chains are poorly suited for front doors. They disrupt the clean architectural lines of a grand foyer, create a safety hazard, and can easily get tangled or damaged when the doors are opened and closed.
The window treatments must be mounted high and wide enough above the door trim to ensure that the front doors can swing open and close freely without ever catching on the fabric or the lower hem bar.
How We Applied These Principles in Sherrills Ford, NC
Applying these exact educational principles to real-world homes is what Cole and I do every day at Bloomin' Blinds of North Charlotte. We recently worked with a homeowner in Sherrills Ford whose beautiful new construction property sat on a highly trafficked road. They loved their double wide front door entrance but felt entirely too exposed to the street at night.
We brought our mobile showroom directly to their driveway. This allowed us to hold up premium light-filtering fabric samples directly against their entryway glass, matching the materials perfectly to their home's natural lighting, interior paint, and trim before making a single cut.
To solve their street-level privacy issue, we custom-built and installed two matching light-filtering roller shades, mounting them flawlessly side-by-side above the front door frame. To keep the home’s interior design completely cohesive, we carried the exact same style to the back of the house, installing a matching single roller shade on the rear door.
Smart Home Window Automation at Your Fingertips
Because entryway windows can be tall and awkward to reach manually, our family team integrated advanced smart-home motorization into this Sherrills Ford project.
Beyond the convenience of a handheld remote control, these automated roller shades feature seamless Wi-Fi integration. The homeowners can control their privacy through a dedicated smartphone app or link the system directly to their existing voice-activated smart home networks, including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple HomeKit.
This allows for complete hands-free window automation. The clients can program custom daily routines—such as setting the front entry shades to automatically lower exactly at sunset—or simply use a voice command to secure the foyer instantly from the comfort of the couch.

The kitchen, while spacious, was completely enclosed from the living and dining room spaces and did not utilize the space efficiently. Traffic flow between the indoors and outdoors was disjointed, and the new kitchen layout solves those problems. The new design eliminates the walls in the kitchen to create an open space for entertaining, and an exterior door was added off the kitchen to facilitate a better traffic flow to the outdoor entertaining space. New cabinets, countertops, flooring, appliances, light fixtures, and finishes help to brighten and modernize the space.

This centrally located intersection to a main thoroughfare a block away was a concern because of the corner lot visibility issue for cars making a turn driving in either direction. The Quince tree bloomed annually for just a short time and was originally planted by the prior home owners decades ago. Keeping it maintained to a height of 4’ maximum, dictated for safety reasons, was still obstructing and limiting the visibility of oncoming traffic at this busy intersection.
The existing roses planted in the same space as the Quince were a perfect backdrop to the new perennials and annuals planted to paint this corner with flowers. The project also included expanding the beautification to both corner areas in coordination with several other planting areas already seasonally updated on the property. With the Redwood Tree as a focal point and Roses, Daphnes, Iris, Azaleas, Fuchsias, Hydrangeas and Camilias highlighting the planting beds the addition of color, including around the driveway and side entrance, transformed the entire space.
Painting With Flowers Is Adding Beauty to Benefit Homeowners & Neighbors!
Kim Beber

A complete kitchen and powder room remodel in Herndon, Virginia, designed around two clear priorities: open up the kitchen to the rest of the main level, and create an experience that felt warm and timeless rather than trendy.
The original layout had a wall separating the kitchen from the dining room and an awkward fridge wall that limited both storage and traffic flow. Our solution involved removing the dividing wall (confirmed non-load-bearing), tightening the new dining room opening to 66 inches, and extending the fridge wall 25 inches into the kitchen to create a proper full-height pantry run. The result is a kitchen that breathes — open to the dining and living areas, with clear sight lines from the island to the bay windows at the far end.
Design Approach
The clients came in knowing they didn't want white. They didn't want navy. They wanted something with real wood character — the kind of finish that ages well and looks more like furniture than stock kitchen cabinetry. Cherry was the answer to that question.
We anchored the room around contrast: warm cherry cabinetry against clean white walls and white quartz, black hardware grounding the cherry's warmth, and a single waterfall island acting as the architectural focal point. Stainless appliances, brushed gold pendant accents, and the herringbone hardwood floor pull the room together without any one element shouting for attention.
The Cabinetry
Medallion Gold Line Sonoma Cappuccino — a stained cherry finish that catches light differently throughout the day. All-plywood box construction, solid wood doors and drawer fronts, soft close everywhere, US-made with a lifetime warranty. Four pull-out drawers built into the pantry bottoms keep the deep storage actually usable rather than a black hole.
Cabinet hardware is Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in flat black — 40 pulls across drawers and doors, plus three longer pulls on the 36-inch base drawers. The black was a deliberate decision: with cherry and stainless already providing warm and cool tones, brass or gold would have been one warm tone too many. Black grounds the cabinetry and gives the kitchen its architectural definition.
The Island and Countertops
MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold quartz throughout — perimeter counters, island, waterfall ends, and the powder room. The Gold variant has subtle warm veining that pairs with cherry where cooler whites would have fought the wood tone.
The island gets a full waterfall edge — slabs book-matched, miters precise, the finished edge essentially seamless. Treating the island as architectural sculpture rather than just functional storage. The black undermount farmhouse-style sink ties back to the hardware throughout the rest of the kitchen.
The Backsplash
MSI Metro Gold tile — small format white and gold tiles in a herringbone-adjacent pattern with intermittent gold accents. Full height, continuous behind the floating shelves and behind the hood.
Four custom floating shelves are spaced above a 3-inch countertop ledge: first shelf 18 inches above the ledge, second shelf 9 inches above that, third 18 inches above the second. The shelves are stained to match the cabinetry. The backsplash continues behind the shelves and behind the hood, so the wall reads as a continuous textured surface that the shelves and hood float in front of.
The Appliances
This is a serious cooking kitchen. The clients chose a 48-inch Wolf gas range, a Sub-Zero built-in refrigerator integrated into the cherry cabinet wall, a Wolf microwave drawer in the island base, and a Bosch dishwasher. For ventilation, we installed a 1200 CFM hood paired with a make-up air system to balance the negative pressure that hood pulls. New ducting was routed through the exterior siding on the side of the house.
The Flooring
MSI engineered hardwood throughout the entire main level — approximately 800 square feet — installed in a Bramlett herringbone pattern. Herringbone adds roughly 15-20 percent to material and labor costs because of the angled cuts and waste factor, but the result is a floor that reads as more considered and luxurious than standard plank flooring. Finished with 4.5-inch white wood baseboards throughout.
The Powder Room
A small room with a big personality. The clients chose a deep blue and teal scallop pattern wallpaper (client-supplied, we installed) and paired it with the same Sonoma Cappuccino cherry vanity used in the kitchen — material continuity between the spaces.
Powder room countertop is the same MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold quartz from the kitchen with a rectangular white undermount sink. Hardware on the powder room vanity is Top Knobs Riverside in honey bronze rather than the kitchen's flat black — the warm bronze pulls the brass tones from the faucet into the millwork and complements the wallpaper. New sconce, kept the existing toilet (refinishing or replacing a working toilet is wasted money in a powder room remodel), and a Panasonic Whisper Green exhaust fan.
Project Specs
Location: Herndon, Virginia
Project type: Combined kitchen and powder room remodel
Project duration: Approximately 4 to 6 weeks
Style: Transitional, Modern Farmhouse, Warm Wood Contemporary
Color palette: Cherry, white, black, brushed gold, deep blue (powder room)
Materials
Cabinetry (kitchen and powder room): Medallion Gold Line Sonoma Cappuccino cherry, Shaker-style, all-plywood box construction, lifetime warranty
Kitchen hardware: Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in flat black (TK1014BLK and TK1017BLK)
Powder room hardware: Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in honey bronze (TK1012HB)
Counter tops: MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold Quartz, pencil edge, waterfall island
Backsplash: MSI Metro Gold tile, full height
Floating shelves: 4 custom shelves at 48" by 9", stained to match cabinets
Range: 48-inch Wolf gas range
Refrigerator: Sub-Zero built-in
Microwave: Wolf microwave drawer (island base)
Hood: 1200 CFM with make-up air system
Kitchen sink: Kohler farmhouse-style, 36-inch base, black
Kitchen faucet: Brizo (homeowner-supplied)
Flooring: MSI engineered hardwood in Bramlett herringbone pattern, approximately 800 sq ft
Baseboards: 4.5-inch white wood throughout
Powder room wallpaper: Client-supplied scallop pattern in blues and teals
Powder room exhaust fan: Panasonic Whisper Green
Paint: Benjamin Moore
Designed and built by My Kitchen and Bath out of our Herndon showroom at 285 Sunset Park Drive. We've been designing and building kitchens, bathrooms, and full home renovations across Northern Virginia and the DMV since 1994.

This centrally located intersection to a main thoroughfare a block away was a concern because of the corner lot visibility issue for cars making a turn driving in either direction. The Quince tree bloomed annually for just a short time and was originally planted by the prior home owners decades ago. Keeping it maintained to a height of 4’ maximum, dictated for safety reasons, was still obstructing and limiting the visibility of oncoming traffic at this busy intersection.
The existing roses planted in the same space as the Quince were a perfect backdrop to the new perennials and annuals planted to paint this corner with flowers. The project also included expanding the beautification to both corner areas in coordination with several other planting areas already seasonally updated on the property. With the Redwood Tree as a focal point and Roses, Daphnes, Iris, Azaleas, Fuchsias, Hydrangeas and Camilias highlighting the planting beds the addition of color, including around the driveway and side entrance, transformed the entire space.
Painting With Flowers Is Adding Beauty to Benefit Homeowners & Neighbors!
Kim Beber

The kitchen, while spacious, was completely enclosed from the living and dining room spaces and did not utilize the space efficiently. Traffic flow between the indoors and outdoors was disjointed, and the new kitchen layout solves those problems. The new design eliminates the walls in the kitchen to create an open space for entertaining, and an exterior door was added off the kitchen to facilitate a better traffic flow to the outdoor entertaining space. New cabinets, countertops, flooring, appliances, light fixtures, and finishes help to brighten and modernize the space.

A complete kitchen and powder room remodel in Herndon, Virginia, designed around two clear priorities: open up the kitchen to the rest of the main level, and create an experience that felt warm and timeless rather than trendy.
The original layout had a wall separating the kitchen from the dining room and an awkward fridge wall that limited both storage and traffic flow. Our solution involved removing the dividing wall (confirmed non-load-bearing), tightening the new dining room opening to 66 inches, and extending the fridge wall 25 inches into the kitchen to create a proper full-height pantry run. The result is a kitchen that breathes — open to the dining and living areas, with clear sight lines from the island to the bay windows at the far end.
Design Approach
The clients came in knowing they didn't want white. They didn't want navy. They wanted something with real wood character — the kind of finish that ages well and looks more like furniture than stock kitchen cabinetry. Cherry was the answer to that question.
We anchored the room around contrast: warm cherry cabinetry against clean white walls and white quartz, black hardware grounding the cherry's warmth, and a single waterfall island acting as the architectural focal point. Stainless appliances, brushed gold pendant accents, and the herringbone hardwood floor pull the room together without any one element shouting for attention.
The Cabinetry
Medallion Gold Line Sonoma Cappuccino — a stained cherry finish that catches light differently throughout the day. All-plywood box construction, solid wood doors and drawer fronts, soft close everywhere, US-made with a lifetime warranty. Four pull-out drawers built into the pantry bottoms keep the deep storage actually usable rather than a black hole.
Cabinet hardware is Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in flat black — 40 pulls across drawers and doors, plus three longer pulls on the 36-inch base drawers. The black was a deliberate decision: with cherry and stainless already providing warm and cool tones, brass or gold would have been one warm tone too many. Black grounds the cabinetry and gives the kitchen its architectural definition.
The Island and Countertops
MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold quartz throughout — perimeter counters, island, waterfall ends, and the powder room. The Gold variant has subtle warm veining that pairs with cherry where cooler whites would have fought the wood tone.
The island gets a full waterfall edge — slabs book-matched, miters precise, the finished edge essentially seamless. Treating the island as architectural sculpture rather than just functional storage. The black undermount farmhouse-style sink ties back to the hardware throughout the rest of the kitchen.
The Backsplash
MSI Metro Gold tile — small format white and gold tiles in a herringbone-adjacent pattern with intermittent gold accents. Full height, continuous behind the floating shelves and behind the hood.
Four custom floating shelves are spaced above a 3-inch countertop ledge: first shelf 18 inches above the ledge, second shelf 9 inches above that, third 18 inches above the second. The shelves are stained to match the cabinetry. The backsplash continues behind the shelves and behind the hood, so the wall reads as a continuous textured surface that the shelves and hood float in front of.
The Appliances
This is a serious cooking kitchen. The clients chose a 48-inch Wolf gas range, a Sub-Zero built-in refrigerator integrated into the cherry cabinet wall, a Wolf microwave drawer in the island base, and a Bosch dishwasher. For ventilation, we installed a 1200 CFM hood paired with a make-up air system to balance the negative pressure that hood pulls. New ducting was routed through the exterior siding on the side of the house.
The Flooring
MSI engineered hardwood throughout the entire main level — approximately 800 square feet — installed in a Bramlett herringbone pattern. Herringbone adds roughly 15-20 percent to material and labor costs because of the angled cuts and waste factor, but the result is a floor that reads as more considered and luxurious than standard plank flooring. Finished with 4.5-inch white wood baseboards throughout.
The Powder Room
A small room with a big personality. The clients chose a deep blue and teal scallop pattern wallpaper (client-supplied, we installed) and paired it with the same Sonoma Cappuccino cherry vanity used in the kitchen — material continuity between the spaces.
Powder room countertop is the same MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold quartz from the kitchen with a rectangular white undermount sink. Hardware on the powder room vanity is Top Knobs Riverside in honey bronze rather than the kitchen's flat black — the warm bronze pulls the brass tones from the faucet into the millwork and complements the wallpaper. New sconce, kept the existing toilet (refinishing or replacing a working toilet is wasted money in a powder room remodel), and a Panasonic Whisper Green exhaust fan.
Project Specs
Location: Herndon, Virginia
Project type: Combined kitchen and powder room remodel
Project duration: Approximately 4 to 6 weeks
Style: Transitional, Modern Farmhouse, Warm Wood Contemporary
Color palette: Cherry, white, black, brushed gold, deep blue (powder room)
Materials
Cabinetry (kitchen and powder room): Medallion Gold Line Sonoma Cappuccino cherry, Shaker-style, all-plywood box construction, lifetime warranty
Kitchen hardware: Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in flat black (TK1014BLK and TK1017BLK)
Powder room hardware: Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in honey bronze (TK1012HB)
Counter tops: MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold Quartz, pencil edge, waterfall island
Backsplash: MSI Metro Gold tile, full height
Floating shelves: 4 custom shelves at 48" by 9", stained to match cabinets
Range: 48-inch Wolf gas range
Refrigerator: Sub-Zero built-in
Microwave: Wolf microwave drawer (island base)
Hood: 1200 CFM with make-up air system
Kitchen sink: Kohler farmhouse-style, 36-inch base, black
Kitchen faucet: Brizo (homeowner-supplied)
Flooring: MSI engineered hardwood in Bramlett herringbone pattern, approximately 800 sq ft
Baseboards: 4.5-inch white wood throughout
Powder room wallpaper: Client-supplied scallop pattern in blues and teals
Powder room exhaust fan: Panasonic Whisper Green
Paint: Benjamin Moore
Designed and built by My Kitchen and Bath out of our Herndon showroom at 285 Sunset Park Drive. We've been designing and building kitchens, bathrooms, and full home renovations across Northern Virginia and the DMV since 1994.

The kitchen, while spacious, was completely enclosed from the living and dining room spaces and did not utilize the space efficiently. Traffic flow between the indoors and outdoors was disjointed, and the new kitchen layout solves those problems. The new design eliminates the walls in the kitchen to create an open space for entertaining, and an exterior door was added off the kitchen to facilitate a better traffic flow to the outdoor entertaining space. New cabinets, countertops, flooring, appliances, light fixtures, and finishes help to brighten and modernize the space.

Discover how premium light-filtering materials and smart-home automation can secure street-level entryway glass without losing natural daylight.
Choosing the right window treatments for a home's front entrance is one of the most challenging design decisions a homeowner can face. The front door is the focal point of a home's curb appeal, often featuring expansive glass panels or side-by-side double doors designed to make a grand architectural statement.
During the day, these large glass features are an asset, flooding entryways and foyers with beautiful natural daylight. However, for homes situated on busy local roads or highly trafficked street-level lots, the dynamic completely changes once the sun goes down.
The moment interior lights are switched on in the evening, a stark contrast is created with the dark outdoors. This creates a severe privacy issue, leaving the entire foyer completely exposed to passing traffic and pedestrians. Finding a solution that delivers absolute evening privacy without permanently plunging the front entrance into darkness during the day requires understanding how modern window treatment materials and operating systems interact.
Light-Filtering vs. Blackout Fabrics
The first step in solving street-level privacy is selecting the correct fabric type. Many homeowners mistakenly assume they need heavy, opaque blackout shades to secure their home from outside eyes at night. While blackout fabrics certainly block 100% of the view, they also block 100% of the natural daylight during the day, forcing you to constantly raise and lower the shades just to see inside your own foyer.
A more effective approach for entryways utilizes premium light-filtering materials. These specialized fabrics are engineered with a precise, tight weave that operates on the principles of directional light and optical density.
Daytime Functionality: When the sun is shining outside, the exterior light levels are significantly higher than the interior light levels. The light-filtering fabric diffuses the intense, direct sunlight into a soft, ambient glow throughout the entryway. This keeps the home bright, eliminates harsh glares, and protects interior hardwood flooring, paint, and trim from damaging UV rays.
Night-Time Functionality: At night, the lighting dynamic reverses. The interior foyer lights make the inside bright, while the outside is dark. Because of the specialized tight weave, the fabric blocks the transmission of clear shapes and details. To a person standing out on the street or driving by on a busy road, the view inside is completely obstructed, delivering total privacy when the family is home for the evening.
Challenges of Front Door Installations
Securing privacy for a double wide front entrance introduces unique structural hurdles that standard windows do not face. Traditional blinds with hanging cords or manual pull chains are poorly suited for front doors. They disrupt the clean architectural lines of a grand foyer, create a safety hazard, and can easily get tangled or damaged when the doors are opened and closed.
The window treatments must be mounted high and wide enough above the door trim to ensure that the front doors can swing open and close freely without ever catching on the fabric or the lower hem bar.
How We Applied These Principles in Sherrills Ford, NC
Applying these exact educational principles to real-world homes is what Cole and I do every day at Bloomin' Blinds of North Charlotte. We recently worked with a homeowner in Sherrills Ford whose beautiful new construction property sat on a highly trafficked road. They loved their double wide front door entrance but felt entirely too exposed to the street at night.
We brought our mobile showroom directly to their driveway. This allowed us to hold up premium light-filtering fabric samples directly against their entryway glass, matching the materials perfectly to their home's natural lighting, interior paint, and trim before making a single cut.
To solve their street-level privacy issue, we custom-built and installed two matching light-filtering roller shades, mounting them flawlessly side-by-side above the front door frame. To keep the home’s interior design completely cohesive, we carried the exact same style to the back of the house, installing a matching single roller shade on the rear door.
Smart Home Window Automation at Your Fingertips
Because entryway windows can be tall and awkward to reach manually, our family team integrated advanced smart-home motorization into this Sherrills Ford project.
Beyond the convenience of a handheld remote control, these automated roller shades feature seamless Wi-Fi integration. The homeowners can control their privacy through a dedicated smartphone app or link the system directly to their existing voice-activated smart home networks, including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and Apple HomeKit.
This allows for complete hands-free window automation. The clients can program custom daily routines—such as setting the front entry shades to automatically lower exactly at sunset—or simply use a voice command to secure the foyer instantly from the comfort of the couch.

A complete kitchen and powder room remodel in Herndon, Virginia, designed around two clear priorities: open up the kitchen to the rest of the main level, and create an experience that felt warm and timeless rather than trendy.
The original layout had a wall separating the kitchen from the dining room and an awkward fridge wall that limited both storage and traffic flow. Our solution involved removing the dividing wall (confirmed non-load-bearing), tightening the new dining room opening to 66 inches, and extending the fridge wall 25 inches into the kitchen to create a proper full-height pantry run. The result is a kitchen that breathes — open to the dining and living areas, with clear sight lines from the island to the bay windows at the far end.
Design Approach
The clients came in knowing they didn't want white. They didn't want navy. They wanted something with real wood character — the kind of finish that ages well and looks more like furniture than stock kitchen cabinetry. Cherry was the answer to that question.
We anchored the room around contrast: warm cherry cabinetry against clean white walls and white quartz, black hardware grounding the cherry's warmth, and a single waterfall island acting as the architectural focal point. Stainless appliances, brushed gold pendant accents, and the herringbone hardwood floor pull the room together without any one element shouting for attention.
The Cabinetry
Medallion Gold Line Sonoma Cappuccino — a stained cherry finish that catches light differently throughout the day. All-plywood box construction, solid wood doors and drawer fronts, soft close everywhere, US-made with a lifetime warranty. Four pull-out drawers built into the pantry bottoms keep the deep storage actually usable rather than a black hole.
Cabinet hardware is Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in flat black — 40 pulls across drawers and doors, plus three longer pulls on the 36-inch base drawers. The black was a deliberate decision: with cherry and stainless already providing warm and cool tones, brass or gold would have been one warm tone too many. Black grounds the cabinetry and gives the kitchen its architectural definition.
The Island and Countertops
MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold quartz throughout — perimeter counters, island, waterfall ends, and the powder room. The Gold variant has subtle warm veining that pairs with cherry where cooler whites would have fought the wood tone.
The island gets a full waterfall edge — slabs book-matched, miters precise, the finished edge essentially seamless. Treating the island as architectural sculpture rather than just functional storage. The black undermount farmhouse-style sink ties back to the hardware throughout the rest of the kitchen.
The Backsplash
MSI Metro Gold tile — small format white and gold tiles in a herringbone-adjacent pattern with intermittent gold accents. Full height, continuous behind the floating shelves and behind the hood.
Four custom floating shelves are spaced above a 3-inch countertop ledge: first shelf 18 inches above the ledge, second shelf 9 inches above that, third 18 inches above the second. The shelves are stained to match the cabinetry. The backsplash continues behind the shelves and behind the hood, so the wall reads as a continuous textured surface that the shelves and hood float in front of.
The Appliances
This is a serious cooking kitchen. The clients chose a 48-inch Wolf gas range, a Sub-Zero built-in refrigerator integrated into the cherry cabinet wall, a Wolf microwave drawer in the island base, and a Bosch dishwasher. For ventilation, we installed a 1200 CFM hood paired with a make-up air system to balance the negative pressure that hood pulls. New ducting was routed through the exterior siding on the side of the house.
The Flooring
MSI engineered hardwood throughout the entire main level — approximately 800 square feet — installed in a Bramlett herringbone pattern. Herringbone adds roughly 15-20 percent to material and labor costs because of the angled cuts and waste factor, but the result is a floor that reads as more considered and luxurious than standard plank flooring. Finished with 4.5-inch white wood baseboards throughout.
The Powder Room
A small room with a big personality. The clients chose a deep blue and teal scallop pattern wallpaper (client-supplied, we installed) and paired it with the same Sonoma Cappuccino cherry vanity used in the kitchen — material continuity between the spaces.
Powder room countertop is the same MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold quartz from the kitchen with a rectangular white undermount sink. Hardware on the powder room vanity is Top Knobs Riverside in honey bronze rather than the kitchen's flat black — the warm bronze pulls the brass tones from the faucet into the millwork and complements the wallpaper. New sconce, kept the existing toilet (refinishing or replacing a working toilet is wasted money in a powder room remodel), and a Panasonic Whisper Green exhaust fan.
Project Specs
Location: Herndon, Virginia
Project type: Combined kitchen and powder room remodel
Project duration: Approximately 4 to 6 weeks
Style: Transitional, Modern Farmhouse, Warm Wood Contemporary
Color palette: Cherry, white, black, brushed gold, deep blue (powder room)
Materials
Cabinetry (kitchen and powder room): Medallion Gold Line Sonoma Cappuccino cherry, Shaker-style, all-plywood box construction, lifetime warranty
Kitchen hardware: Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in flat black (TK1014BLK and TK1017BLK)
Powder room hardware: Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in honey bronze (TK1012HB)
Counter tops: MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold Quartz, pencil edge, waterfall island
Backsplash: MSI Metro Gold tile, full height
Floating shelves: 4 custom shelves at 48" by 9", stained to match cabinets
Range: 48-inch Wolf gas range
Refrigerator: Sub-Zero built-in
Microwave: Wolf microwave drawer (island base)
Hood: 1200 CFM with make-up air system
Kitchen sink: Kohler farmhouse-style, 36-inch base, black
Kitchen faucet: Brizo (homeowner-supplied)
Flooring: MSI engineered hardwood in Bramlett herringbone pattern, approximately 800 sq ft
Baseboards: 4.5-inch white wood throughout
Powder room wallpaper: Client-supplied scallop pattern in blues and teals
Powder room exhaust fan: Panasonic Whisper Green
Paint: Benjamin Moore
Designed and built by My Kitchen and Bath out of our Herndon showroom at 285 Sunset Park Drive. We've been designing and building kitchens, bathrooms, and full home renovations across Northern Virginia and the DMV since 1994.

A complete kitchen and powder room remodel in Herndon, Virginia, designed around two clear priorities: open up the kitchen to the rest of the main level, and create an experience that felt warm and timeless rather than trendy.
The original layout had a wall separating the kitchen from the dining room and an awkward fridge wall that limited both storage and traffic flow. Our solution involved removing the dividing wall (confirmed non-load-bearing), tightening the new dining room opening to 66 inches, and extending the fridge wall 25 inches into the kitchen to create a proper full-height pantry run. The result is a kitchen that breathes — open to the dining and living areas, with clear sight lines from the island to the bay windows at the far end.
Design Approach
The clients came in knowing they didn't want white. They didn't want navy. They wanted something with real wood character — the kind of finish that ages well and looks more like furniture than stock kitchen cabinetry. Cherry was the answer to that question.
We anchored the room around contrast: warm cherry cabinetry against clean white walls and white quartz, black hardware grounding the cherry's warmth, and a single waterfall island acting as the architectural focal point. Stainless appliances, brushed gold pendant accents, and the herringbone hardwood floor pull the room together without any one element shouting for attention.
The Cabinetry
Medallion Gold Line Sonoma Cappuccino — a stained cherry finish that catches light differently throughout the day. All-plywood box construction, solid wood doors and drawer fronts, soft close everywhere, US-made with a lifetime warranty. Four pull-out drawers built into the pantry bottoms keep the deep storage actually usable rather than a black hole.
Cabinet hardware is Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in flat black — 40 pulls across drawers and doors, plus three longer pulls on the 36-inch base drawers. The black was a deliberate decision: with cherry and stainless already providing warm and cool tones, brass or gold would have been one warm tone too many. Black grounds the cabinetry and gives the kitchen its architectural definition.
The Island and Countertops
MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold quartz throughout — perimeter counters, island, waterfall ends, and the powder room. The Gold variant has subtle warm veining that pairs with cherry where cooler whites would have fought the wood tone.
The island gets a full waterfall edge — slabs book-matched, miters precise, the finished edge essentially seamless. Treating the island as architectural sculpture rather than just functional storage. The black undermount farmhouse-style sink ties back to the hardware throughout the rest of the kitchen.
The Backsplash
MSI Metro Gold tile — small format white and gold tiles in a herringbone-adjacent pattern with intermittent gold accents. Full height, continuous behind the floating shelves and behind the hood.
Four custom floating shelves are spaced above a 3-inch countertop ledge: first shelf 18 inches above the ledge, second shelf 9 inches above that, third 18 inches above the second. The shelves are stained to match the cabinetry. The backsplash continues behind the shelves and behind the hood, so the wall reads as a continuous textured surface that the shelves and hood float in front of.
The Appliances
This is a serious cooking kitchen. The clients chose a 48-inch Wolf gas range, a Sub-Zero built-in refrigerator integrated into the cherry cabinet wall, a Wolf microwave drawer in the island base, and a Bosch dishwasher. For ventilation, we installed a 1200 CFM hood paired with a make-up air system to balance the negative pressure that hood pulls. New ducting was routed through the exterior siding on the side of the house.
The Flooring
MSI engineered hardwood throughout the entire main level — approximately 800 square feet — installed in a Bramlett herringbone pattern. Herringbone adds roughly 15-20 percent to material and labor costs because of the angled cuts and waste factor, but the result is a floor that reads as more considered and luxurious than standard plank flooring. Finished with 4.5-inch white wood baseboards throughout.
The Powder Room
A small room with a big personality. The clients chose a deep blue and teal scallop pattern wallpaper (client-supplied, we installed) and paired it with the same Sonoma Cappuccino cherry vanity used in the kitchen — material continuity between the spaces.
Powder room countertop is the same MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold quartz from the kitchen with a rectangular white undermount sink. Hardware on the powder room vanity is Top Knobs Riverside in honey bronze rather than the kitchen's flat black — the warm bronze pulls the brass tones from the faucet into the millwork and complements the wallpaper. New sconce, kept the existing toilet (refinishing or replacing a working toilet is wasted money in a powder room remodel), and a Panasonic Whisper Green exhaust fan.
Project Specs
Location: Herndon, Virginia
Project type: Combined kitchen and powder room remodel
Project duration: Approximately 4 to 6 weeks
Style: Transitional, Modern Farmhouse, Warm Wood Contemporary
Color palette: Cherry, white, black, brushed gold, deep blue (powder room)
Materials
Cabinetry (kitchen and powder room): Medallion Gold Line Sonoma Cappuccino cherry, Shaker-style, all-plywood box construction, lifetime warranty
Kitchen hardware: Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in flat black (TK1014BLK and TK1017BLK)
Powder room hardware: Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in honey bronze (TK1012HB)
Counter tops: MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold Quartz, pencil edge, waterfall island
Backsplash: MSI Metro Gold tile, full height
Floating shelves: 4 custom shelves at 48" by 9", stained to match cabinets
Range: 48-inch Wolf gas range
Refrigerator: Sub-Zero built-in
Microwave: Wolf microwave drawer (island base)
Hood: 1200 CFM with make-up air system
Kitchen sink: Kohler farmhouse-style, 36-inch base, black
Kitchen faucet: Brizo (homeowner-supplied)
Flooring: MSI engineered hardwood in Bramlett herringbone pattern, approximately 800 sq ft
Baseboards: 4.5-inch white wood throughout
Powder room wallpaper: Client-supplied scallop pattern in blues and teals
Powder room exhaust fan: Panasonic Whisper Green
Paint: Benjamin Moore
Designed and built by My Kitchen and Bath out of our Herndon showroom at 285 Sunset Park Drive. We've been designing and building kitchens, bathrooms, and full home renovations across Northern Virginia and the DMV since 1994.

A complete kitchen and powder room remodel in Herndon, Virginia, designed around two clear priorities: open up the kitchen to the rest of the main level, and create an experience that felt warm and timeless rather than trendy.
The original layout had a wall separating the kitchen from the dining room and an awkward fridge wall that limited both storage and traffic flow. Our solution involved removing the dividing wall (confirmed non-load-bearing), tightening the new dining room opening to 66 inches, and extending the fridge wall 25 inches into the kitchen to create a proper full-height pantry run. The result is a kitchen that breathes — open to the dining and living areas, with clear sight lines from the island to the bay windows at the far end.
Design Approach
The clients came in knowing they didn't want white. They didn't want navy. They wanted something with real wood character — the kind of finish that ages well and looks more like furniture than stock kitchen cabinetry. Cherry was the answer to that question.
We anchored the room around contrast: warm cherry cabinetry against clean white walls and white quartz, black hardware grounding the cherry's warmth, and a single waterfall island acting as the architectural focal point. Stainless appliances, brushed gold pendant accents, and the herringbone hardwood floor pull the room together without any one element shouting for attention.
The Cabinetry
Medallion Gold Line Sonoma Cappuccino — a stained cherry finish that catches light differently throughout the day. All-plywood box construction, solid wood doors and drawer fronts, soft close everywhere, US-made with a lifetime warranty. Four pull-out drawers built into the pantry bottoms keep the deep storage actually usable rather than a black hole.
Cabinet hardware is Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in flat black — 40 pulls across drawers and doors, plus three longer pulls on the 36-inch base drawers. The black was a deliberate decision: with cherry and stainless already providing warm and cool tones, brass or gold would have been one warm tone too many. Black grounds the cabinetry and gives the kitchen its architectural definition.
The Island and Countertops
MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold quartz throughout — perimeter counters, island, waterfall ends, and the powder room. The Gold variant has subtle warm veining that pairs with cherry where cooler whites would have fought the wood tone.
The island gets a full waterfall edge — slabs book-matched, miters precise, the finished edge essentially seamless. Treating the island as architectural sculpture rather than just functional storage. The black undermount farmhouse-style sink ties back to the hardware throughout the rest of the kitchen.
The Backsplash
MSI Metro Gold tile — small format white and gold tiles in a herringbone-adjacent pattern with intermittent gold accents. Full height, continuous behind the floating shelves and behind the hood.
Four custom floating shelves are spaced above a 3-inch countertop ledge: first shelf 18 inches above the ledge, second shelf 9 inches above that, third 18 inches above the second. The shelves are stained to match the cabinetry. The backsplash continues behind the shelves and behind the hood, so the wall reads as a continuous textured surface that the shelves and hood float in front of.
The Appliances
This is a serious cooking kitchen. The clients chose a 48-inch Wolf gas range, a Sub-Zero built-in refrigerator integrated into the cherry cabinet wall, a Wolf microwave drawer in the island base, and a Bosch dishwasher. For ventilation, we installed a 1200 CFM hood paired with a make-up air system to balance the negative pressure that hood pulls. New ducting was routed through the exterior siding on the side of the house.
The Flooring
MSI engineered hardwood throughout the entire main level — approximately 800 square feet — installed in a Bramlett herringbone pattern. Herringbone adds roughly 15-20 percent to material and labor costs because of the angled cuts and waste factor, but the result is a floor that reads as more considered and luxurious than standard plank flooring. Finished with 4.5-inch white wood baseboards throughout.
The Powder Room
A small room with a big personality. The clients chose a deep blue and teal scallop pattern wallpaper (client-supplied, we installed) and paired it with the same Sonoma Cappuccino cherry vanity used in the kitchen — material continuity between the spaces.
Powder room countertop is the same MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold quartz from the kitchen with a rectangular white undermount sink. Hardware on the powder room vanity is Top Knobs Riverside in honey bronze rather than the kitchen's flat black — the warm bronze pulls the brass tones from the faucet into the millwork and complements the wallpaper. New sconce, kept the existing toilet (refinishing or replacing a working toilet is wasted money in a powder room remodel), and a Panasonic Whisper Green exhaust fan.
Project Specs
Location: Herndon, Virginia
Project type: Combined kitchen and powder room remodel
Project duration: Approximately 4 to 6 weeks
Style: Transitional, Modern Farmhouse, Warm Wood Contemporary
Color palette: Cherry, white, black, brushed gold, deep blue (powder room)
Materials
Cabinetry (kitchen and powder room): Medallion Gold Line Sonoma Cappuccino cherry, Shaker-style, all-plywood box construction, lifetime warranty
Kitchen hardware: Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in flat black (TK1014BLK and TK1017BLK)
Powder room hardware: Top Knobs Riverside Pulls in honey bronze (TK1012HB)
Counter tops: MSI Calacatta Miraggio Gold Quartz, pencil edge, waterfall island
Backsplash: MSI Metro Gold tile, full height
Floating shelves: 4 custom shelves at 48" by 9", stained to match cabinets
Range: 48-inch Wolf gas range
Refrigerator: Sub-Zero built-in
Microwave: Wolf microwave drawer (island base)
Hood: 1200 CFM with make-up air system
Kitchen sink: Kohler farmhouse-style, 36-inch base, black
Kitchen faucet: Brizo (homeowner-supplied)
Flooring: MSI engineered hardwood in Bramlett herringbone pattern, approximately 800 sq ft
Baseboards: 4.5-inch white wood throughout
Powder room wallpaper: Client-supplied scallop pattern in blues and teals
Powder room exhaust fan: Panasonic Whisper Green
Paint: Benjamin Moore
Designed and built by My Kitchen and Bath out of our Herndon showroom at 285 Sunset Park Drive. We've been designing and building kitchens, bathrooms, and full home renovations across Northern Virginia and the DMV since 1994.
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