Daybreak Design Blog

Two problems that this kitchen remodel addressed were the desire for more display space and flexible dining space.

The couple has one busy teenager living at home, with a second one occasionally visiting from college. They like to have casual evening meals in the kitchen but were short on space. This table was designed to snug up against the cabinets to easily fit 2 or 3 during the day. When the fourth is home from school, the table easily slides away from the cabinets and a fourth chair is pulled over. See above, on right.

This family has a very sleek contemporary home, and they are serious collectors of paintings, B&W photography and primitive artifacts. We designed the vitrine with a nod to Piet Mondrian. The vitrine was designed such that the table appears to be part of it, due to repeated heights and materials. Its stainless steel back shows the earthy character of the artifacts to their best advantage. Repeating the use of the steel on the custom table and using black chairs to echo the black and white photos unifies the ensemble.

This project was published in Distinctive Kitchen Solutions, Volume 41, pp. 28-29. Sunray Custom Cabinets built the cabinets. See www.sunraycustomcabinets.com

This design problem involved taking an existing rug design offered by a showroom and custom coloring it to suit our design needs for a living room.

We needed a neutral tone to be a major player in the rug’s colors to help the existing neutral furniture look like part of a planned scheme. We also wanted to acknowledge the maroon wing chair (the only colored piece in the room) and the blue/green in an adjacent dining room rug.

So, we began with full scale sketches in marker. We chose these two to show the client. After his approval of one of the color directions we selected the exact yarn colors from the rug companies offerings, which they then used to convert the scheme into a computer rendering. These renderings always look flat and lifeless, given the media’s limitations. We just use them to confirm communication between us and the maker, and to check whether we need to change the emphasis of a particular color, etc… with this one we could see that they missed an outline color that we had requested. With that change made we went ahead and ordered the “strike-off” (an actual corner sample made in the desired colors). When this arrived, confirmed that we loved it and proceeded to order the rug.

The original drawing for this master vanity is shown below. It kept bothering me that it was a little cramped for 2 sinks. Washing your face, drying your hair or applying make up require you to extend your elbows. I kept picturing two people using it together and bumping elbows all the time. Also, the surface area really didn’t include enough space to set down a dryer or towel etc. without it flopping into a sink.

Being framed between two walls 5′ apart was a given, so I proposed this alternative solution. It provides a larger usable counter surface and it allows two people to use it without interfering with one another.

A custom, hammered copper sink, map-like Forrest Web marble, cherry cabinets and oil-rubbed bronze fixtures complete the picture.