With busy jobs and two elementary school kids, Kendra Oxholm and her husband needed a kitchen that could keep up with their hectic lifestyle. Their existing kitchen didn’t come close. It sat closed off behind a wall separating it from the dining room. The space felt cramped. The cabinets lacked storage. And the materials — aging basic white cabinets, laminate countertops, tile flooring and blue wallpaper — felt dated and uninspiring. “I love to cook and knew this kitchen wouldn’t work for me,” Oxholm says.
Wanting more openness, efficiency, color and contemporary materials, the couple hired designer Sean Lewis for help. Lewis got to work knocking down the wall to open the kitchen to the dining room. He added a peninsula with seating that improves connection between the two spaces. Closing off an exterior door to the driveway freed up room to add more cabinetry and improve storage. Gray paint for the cabinets with brass hardware and other brass details creates an elegant style. A graphic black-and-white porcelain tile floor energizes the new kitchen, while a black-painted open pantry brings a dramatic touch.
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The landscape design includes smart features. “We used a Sonance sound system with two subwoofers and six speakers within the garden spaces, as well as speakers in the cabana that are controlled by a home automation system,” Stucchi says. “The landscape lights, the bistro lights and the lights in the cabana are all controlled by a Lutron system app on the homeowners’ phones.”
Paperbark maples (Acer griseum, USDA zones 4 to 8; find your zone), which are multistemmed trees with beautiful bark, frame the cabana. “About a million resident wild bunnies severely limited our plant palette with their insatiable appetites for herbaceous perennials. No amount of rabbit deterrent would help us there. We tried everything,” Stucchi says.
He used trees, flowering shrubs, evergreens and grasses for structure, color and texture. These include a mix of hydrangeas, ‘Karl Foerster’ feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, zones 4 to 9) and both Blushing Knock Out roses (Rosa ‘Radyod’, zones 5 to 11) and Knock Out roses (Rosa ‘Radrazz’, zones 5 to 11).