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Sometimes walking into a room can take your breath away—and it’s not a positive reaction. The hideous wallpaper with the outdated border, the furniture circa 1950s Holiday Inn, the shag carpet with a pattern created by stains, and the art sold by the yard can make you dizzy. Sometimes the room is fine, but in need of a simple face-lift, like an old friend who’s spent way too many hours in the sun. It’s astonishing what some deft surgery can do. We’ve tracked down five examples of major transformations: a powder room, a living room, a den, and two kitchens.
Back to the Future
Hip & Gable’s Retta Leritz DiFate and Laura Elzemeyer Murray transformed Mrs. Elzemeyer Murray’s house by trading dark and dank for bright and white.
BEFORE AFTER
The problem: The house was built in 1937 for architect Gale Henderson, and the kitchen dated back to the early ’50s. “It was small, dark, and the stove was easily older than my parents,” says Laura Elzemeyer Murray. “It was dirty and gross.” Moreover, it was originally attached to a butler’s pantry and maid’s quarters, with a shower stashed in a closet. “It wasn’t relevant to the way people live today,” Mrs. Elzemeyer Murray says.
The solution: Summon Rehnquist Design & Build to rip it all out, take down the wall between the kitchen and breakfast room, knock down the back of the house, and build a 200-square-foot addition. To resolve the lack of light, they added a bay window, an arched window above the sink, French doors, and transom windows overhead. “We put in as many windows as we could,” says Retta Leritz DiFate, Allied Member ASID.
The key to the design was to match the kitchen to the home’s Georgian Revival style. “It goes back to my grandmother’s house, with the stacked cabinets and cabinet latches and the white from that era,” Mrs. Elzemeyer Murray says. “It’s like country houses.” “But modern enough to make it current and fresh,” Mrs. Leritz DiFate adds.
Beck/Allen Cabinetry created the cabinets, while the designers went to work tracking down the vintage (but still in-production) hardware, including antique refrigerator latches by Cliffside Industries. “I found them online really cheap,” Mrs. Elzemeyer Murray says. “They are solid brass. And they’re not a knockoff; they’re the same brand. But I got them for a third off.” The shelving along the perimeter of the kitchen was done in white; the cabinets in the island, in chocolate brown.
The countertops, white Danby marble from Global Granite & Marble, were worked by Stone Fabricators; subway tiles in the same material run up the wall to the ceiling. The hardwood floor matches the rest of the house. Regarding the Metro Lighting fixtures, Mrs. Elzemeyer Murray says, “I eyeballed those years ago, and I knew those were going in.”
The final result? “It is the perfect marriage of old and new,” says Mrs. Leritz DiFate. “It embodies the style of the house.” Adds Mrs. Elzemeyer Murray, “It’s bright, light, and beautiful.”
The Heir Apparent
This homeowner was designer Linda Kusmer’s first client. Now, decades later, the time had come to update and redo.
BEFORE AFTER
The problem: The design was 30 years old. “It was the traditional small prints in the wallpaper, coral carpet—and the old drapery under the top treatment was a lacy draw drape,” says Linda Kusmer, Allied Member ASID, of Total Interior Designs. “It was very traditional, very old-fashioned.” Add to that a sofa that was so uncomfortable “you really couldn’t sit on it,” and it was clear that the space needed refreshing.
The solution: The first step was to remove the carpeting and the large double doors between the living and family rooms. Then hardwood specialist Leon Anderson stained the floor in a dark finish that melded well with the adjoining room. Mark Volmer painted the walls in a palette of light and dark grays, pairing Benjamin Moore’s Stone Harbor (dark) and Barren Plain (light) with bright-white woodwork. Tinker’s Upholstery rebuilt the sofa and re-covered it in a gray silk. A two-tone gray print was used on the white side chair’s cushion. The homeowner’s nephew, photographer John Fedele, shot the framed photos hanging on the wall. “That brought in a more contemporary element, as did the glass piece on the table, which was also made by a relative,” Mrs. Kusmer says.
The key was reusing the existing furniture, which Mrs. Kusmer had placed in another design in the homeowners’ first house. “They were my first clients 35 years ago,” she says. “We used things that were treasures for her. Her mother had passed away, and she’d lived with her mother. A lot of this had to do with emotion and joy they had in this home. We wanted to keep the memories and highlight them, but still bring in some fresh elements.” Accenting treasures include Lladró porcelain, a fan hanging on the wall, and an antique wicker side table. The result is a stark contrast to the space’s original appearance. “When I was in the process of doing this house, I happened to see an article about the redo of The Plaza Hotel in New York,” Mrs. Kusmer says. “The main suite on the top floor was done exactly in these peaches and grays, as well as similar furniture. I thought it was really cool that without knowing it, I was right on the latest, the greatest.”
Poetry in Motion
Dana Romeis made her formal designing debut here with the transformation of this powder room, created for one of the St. Louis Symphony show houses.
BEFORE AFTER
The problem: “Uggghly,” says Dana Romeis, Allied Member ASID, of Fibercations. “It was ugly.” Located in a century-old Tudor house across the street from Washington University, the space was built for storage. Then someone converted it into a French provincial powder room. “It was probably a little closet, so its size and configuration was odd,” she says. “It had an angled wall, so everything had to be custom. It had a radiator and a nice little window. It functioned…but just.”
The solution: Gut it and dump it all. The new design started with the Stone Forest granite vessel sink.
“Powder rooms don’t require much storage—a few rolls of toilet paper, a tube of lipstick, and some spare hand towels—so we didn’t have much of a storage need in that vanity,” Mrs. Romeis says. “It gave us the ability to do things just for the aesthetic, rather than function.”
The vanity, made by Weiskopf Cabinets & Woodworking in Washington, Mo., was designed around the sink. The walls were papered in a softly metallic paper “with a little bit of shine.” Sisal covered the floor.
“The whole thing was fine versus coarse, handmade versus manufactured,” says Mrs. Romeis. The art created by Lesley Dill, on loan from Locus Gallery, uses a line from Emily Dickinson (“I felt my life with both my hands to see if it was there”) with each letter cut out of copper. That piece of hanging art and the granite sink provide dual focal points.
The finishing touch to the room: “We highlighted the bowl and the art with low-voltage lighting, so they both have a place on the stage in the limelight.”
It Took the Pot
Designer Emily Castle and kitchen expert Jenny Rausch spent three years convincing these homeowners to redo their kitchen.
BEFORE AFTER
The problem: There were many. The first: a soffit that ran around a column in the kitchen, with cabinets hanging underneath. Then there was that countertop, which was overcrowded with every type of small appliance. “There was very little counter space,” says Emily Castle, ASID, of Castle Design, who created the new kitchen with certified kitchen designer Jenny Rausch, owner of Karr Bick Kitchen + Bath. “There was a lot of cabinetry, but it really wasn’t that useful.” But convincing the clients that it was time to redo took awhile—more than three years and the fact that the stove no longer worked. Mrs. Castle recalls: “It got to the point where [we said], ‘We have to do it now. Really.’”
The solution: First, they gutted the whole area except the soffit, which they discovered supplied heating and cooling to the whole first floor. “But we didn’t want to hang a lot of cabinetry off of it, so that’s when we went to the open shelving with some decorative touches,” Mrs. Castle says. To handle the homeowners’ collection of appliances, they built an appliance garage into the cabinet to the right of the dishwasher. “That’s the cabinet to end all cabinets right there,” Mrs. Castle says.
Hamstrung by a tight budget, the designers carefully picked where to spend and where to save. The countertop in the main kitchen is Formica, the overmount sink by Kohler. “Then we chose to put in that fabulous mosaic tile at both the sink area and the stove to highlight those two areas,” Mrs. Castle says. The marble tiles are crema marfil, “which is readily available and not expensive.” Karr Bick created the quartersawn oak cabinets and ordered the Karndean flooring. “It’s a wood look-alike that is really, really good,” Mrs. Castle says. “It’s throughout the whole first floor.” Where the clients invested money was in the granite, purchased at Global Granite & Marble, that tops the island. And the original column was widened to give it more mass.
The color scheme was derived from a ceramic pot: “The client bought that pot from Italy and told us, ‘This is the palette for the kitchen.’ It took the pot to get it done.”
Flummoxed by a Fireplace
Dana King designed an addition and then grappled with a fireplace that couldn’t be moved.
BEFORE AFTER
The problem: “It was dated and small,” says Dana King, of Dana’s Design Studio. “And it was stuck in the ’70s with its mauves and blues. It was cold.” In order to get more space for the family, an addition was built that doubled the size of the den. New problem: The fireplace was no longer in the center of the wall. Also, the husband wanted a beamed ceiling, but the walls are only 8 feet high; the couple wanted a game room, but the addition was too short. Then there was that old problem: The husband liked a colonial style, while his wife wanted Craftsman.
The solution: The first step was to gut the room and punch out a wall. “That fireplace was nonnegotiable, and it went from the center of the room to off to the side,” Mrs. King says. To trick the eye, she put the TV slightly off to the left, balancing the fireplace. She then extended the hearth by 2 feet, recessing the two flanking bookcases. Mrs. King used standard kitchen cabinetry. “It came in parts, and there was only a little custom trim that we did. It helped shave off a little bit of the cost. And there is some advantage in doing it that way; you get consistency in the stain.”
Then there were those dueling styles. “That wall is kind of a hybrid where I think we incorporated colonial and Craftsman flavors,” Mrs. King says. As for the ceiling: “He wanted to be able to look up at an interesting ceiling, so I proposed a coffered ceiling with a bit of colonial molding and trim in each one. Then they really threw me when they fell in love with an area rug [from Rug Decor] that was more contemporary and modern. I went with that.” They also lost their hearts to some olive leather furniture discovered at Bassett Furniture—even though they’d planned on painting the walls green. “It was going to be a lot of green,” Mrs. King says, “but I said, ‘You can mix warm and cool greens in a room.’” They chose Restoration Hardware’s Bay Laurel for the walls. “The green was going to show off that woodwork so well, and they really wanted cherry finish on the entertainment center… It was quite an ordeal to figure out that wall and what they wanted for function and the look.”
By Christy Marshall; Photography by Katehrine Bish, Jeff Borts, John Fedele, Matthew Hughes, and Clark Kincaid
