Super 6

June 2006 Special Advertising Section

When you first walk into a room, what is it that strikes you—an elegant chandelier, a rose-flecked granite countertop, or perhaps a welcoming hearth set off by an ornate mantle? Details such as these can add character to a space, but for a truly outstanding room, multiple elements and features must blend seamlessly—and relate to the rooms in the rest of the home. This requires vision, and a good remodeler is able to see the sum of the parts, rather than the parts themselves. We found six area remodelers who mastered that equation in some very different and challenging spaces. We talked to them about their visions, their methods, and the materials that made the rooms come together.

Cooking with a View
Lake Minnetonka, the remodeler, Lake Country Builders of Excelsior, felt the gorgeous views and the kitchen should be the focal points. The client, who enjoys cooking, agreed that the kitchen was most important room in the house, says Erin Rogers, the project captain. So Lake Country Builders moved the kitchen from its previous location in the front of the house to the back. “That allowed us to get more windows and doors on the lakeside view,” she says. Next, the designers brought in custom-built cabinets and a specially designed center island. “The island and the cabinetry detail was something that we just went over the top with,” Rogers says. They chose a mildly-knotted alder for a rustic, Craftsman look, and doubled the amount of cabinet space by adding a built-in bench and display cabinetry in the expanded kitchen space. The six-foot-square center island features a raised, rounded eating bar mounted on its corner, and it incorporates a vegetable sink without sacrificing its plentiful workspace. Though the room works well on its own, Rogers and her team wanted to relate the kitchen to the rest of the renovations—especially a porch that had been added facing the lake at a slight angle from the house’s orientation. They echoed the porch’s angle in the kitchen’s coffered ceiling, in the placement of the center island, and even in the just-off-kilter floor tiles. “The angle really brings your attention to the view of the lake,” says Rogers. “It’s parallel with the lakeshore.”

A Downstairs Pub
In the renovation of the lower-level of a Plymouth home, the remodeler installed angled beams in the coffered ceiling to give the previously staid space more dimension. “We were limited in the space—it was just a rectangle,” says Melanie Trachsel, a designer with Streeter & Associates of Deephaven, who redesigned the room with an Irish pub theme. “To create a more interesting space, we had to visually stimulate the whole design.” Diagonal lines and tin inlays are interspersed between the rich wood beams in the coffered ceiling, and birch woodwork is rusticated and distressed for a worn-in feel. A stained-concrete floor balances out the warmth of the wood, and grout lines in the floor line up with the beams overhead to mirror the angle element. To soften the geometric angles and lines, Trachsel included some curved details: a wrought-iron railing leading upstairs, doorways topped with arches, a fireplace screen with a wrought-iron scroll, and the bar, which bows out in the middle. Paralleling the bar is a wood soffit on the ceiling. “The curved bar is the most exciting feature,” she says. “It all works well together.” Additional touches include a distressed copper sink and light fixtures with copper accents. Trachsel chose pewter for cabinetry and door hardware to mix up the metals and tie into the tin ceiling. Distressed metallic tiles in the back wall suggest a mirror, and light fixtures set in the brick wall give the area its antique, pub-like feel—one that is decidedly different from the rest of the house. “It’s very sophisticated,” says Trachsel. “The downstairs looks like it could be 100 years old.”