Excelsior Kitchen

When it was time for Brent and Marilyn Marmo to recreate the kitchen of their early 1900s farmhouse Excelsior kitchen, they called architect Richard Lundin. “The kitchen had been done in the last round of remodeling in the early eighties,” says Lundin, who worked with architect Mike Bader. “It didn’t flow very well and didn’t connect well with the other rooms.” Lundin and the homeowners agreed that the original home had nice character, but the owners wanted to add a different—more modern—aspect to the kitchen. “Brent has a strong sense of the modern,” says Lundin, “and though Marilyn shares that, she really liked the old.” His role was to find a balance and “create a new interpretation,” but maintain the underlying spirit of the home.

Lundin also took into consideration how the room would be used. The family of four includes two teenagers, one of whom also enjoys cooking, and the kitchen is the hub of the home. “Brent and Marilyn also collect art, so we intentionally created walls that would accommodate key pieces,” says Lundin. “We wanted to bring the art into the space where they spend most of their time.”

The result is a new kitchen that offers the necessary flow and takes advantage of the space without an addition. “What’s hard to capture in photos,” says Lundin, “is the dramatic change in the quality of lighting. Before, it had a closed feeling, now the cooking activity is closer to the windows and the space overall has a better connection to the garden.” The huge H windows pivot and open almost 100 percent, which helps blur the line between inside and out.

“Working with a client is a real leap of faith,” says Lundin. “It’s difficult to truly appreciate the subtleties and little details of a project such as this until the owners are in the space and it continues to reveal things to them.”