My partner and I are looking to remodel the fairly standard mid-century house we’re in. I’d call it a cratfsman, minus the more charming aspects of the textbook examples. Actually, I call it “Seattle two-story blueprint #4.” It was the brainchild of a guy who was sufficiently knowledgeable, but as we’re learning he didn’t have great follow through. There are a lot of places where he obviously stopped following any kind of plan and left something as “good enough.” What’s prompting this remodel quest is that he really, really liked to keep his spaces separate. Even the dining room and living room, which are connected by a 10 foot opening, feel like they’re entirely different spaces.
This means we’re looking for a designer. Which is hard. We paid several hundred dollars for a walk-through consultation that resulted in: move the kitchen to the other side of the house, take out all the interior walls. When I said “we don’t have a half million dollars to remo the upstairs” they replied, “you don’t have half a million dollars worth of square footage. This is $300K, tops… wait, are you saying there’s a downstairs?” Yikes. Now that we’re back to this project of renovating our forever-home we’re all over the internet.
So I clickbaited that this would be a tip, it’s really a plea: designers, please don’t exclusively feature the chateau, the log home, the mid-century modern with cathedral ceilings… I guarantee 90% of your potential clientele are not in that position. I get that you only have to design ONE house each year if it’s on Mercer Island, but goddamnit I want my house redesigned, too.
I want to see what you did in a kitchen with just under eight feet of vertical space. How did you turn a 200 sq ft kitchen from one-ass to the room where friends and family can congregate -while- dinner is being prepared – without tripping over the guests? What did you do for the living room that always feels small, despite being 300 sq ft? How did you manage the odd angles of a half-assed “breakfast nook”?
So if you could do me this favor, I’d really appreciate it. And I’ll hire your cousin the contractor.
kmskelton 