Scope

Norman and Lucille hired Approach Architects to remodel their early 1970’s contemporary home in Andover. The goals of the project were to expand the kitchen, formal dining room and master bedroom suite.

Our Approach

The major design challenge was in determining how to capture the additional space requested without substantially expanding the footprint of the house. The current house was configured so that half of the family room off of the kitchen had a double height ceiling that led directly to the master bedroom above. To expand the master bedroom suite, we dropped in a new floor over the family room below. This move allowed for the creation of an expanded closet and storage area and a private sitting room with a fireplace and built-in bookcases.

The existing kitchen had an “L” shaped layout with a large eat-in table in the center of the space. We expanded the kitchen by capturing roughly half of the adjacent family room and removing the existing table. In it’s place, we located a new island counter with a 12" over-hang to accommodate three stools. The island cabinetry included a new sub-zero wine refrigerator, microwave, storage, and recycling area. The main “L” shape of the kitchen remained, however the refrigerator was relocated away from the dining room entry to provide a larger opening to pass through. A new professional six burner cook top with hood and warming drawers below was featured on the short wall of the “L”. The other wall included a larger window above the sink, a new 30" wide dishwasher, and both upper and lower cabinet storage. Another design feature of the new kitchen was the construction of a barrel vault that was carved into the existing flat ceiling above. The purpose of the barrel vault was twofold, to provide a dramatic increase in the ceiling height of the kitchen and to provide and an area for us to locate our cable suspended lighting system.

The dining room was the only area of the house where the footprint was expanded. In the existing configuration, the dining room was stepped back from the exterior of the house 24" and the roof had a large 12" soffit overhang beyond that. To minimize the construction, we relocated the wall 30" beyond it’s existing location thereby keeping the new construction within the existing roof line.