Nothing says “cabin” like wood ceilings and walls. But when you’re trying to make that cabin into a year-round home, all that wood can be oppressive.
That’s the challenge Sarah Ocasek faced when the new owners of a 1964 Evergreen cabin approached her about renovating their kitchen. Although the kitchen is part of a large main-floor living and dining space that features walls of windows looking out over the foothills, it didn’t feel expansive.
“The homeowners wanted to open up the space for entertaining, brighten it up, and capitalize on the big windows to bring the outside in,” says Ocasek, owner and principal designer of Evergreen-based Blackbird Kitchen and Bath.
Part of the problem was the awkward layout. The kitchen was isolated from the rest of the space by a wall of wood cabinets and the refrigerator. Not only did this interior wall cut off the view from the great room’s vaulted floor-to-ceiling windows, but it created an awkward, L-shaped workspace centered around the dining table.
“It was a very inefficient use of space,” Ocasek says.
She began by taking out the cabinet wall and opening up the kitchen to the living area. The new configuration allowed her to install an island with seating that the homeowners wanted as part of their open entertaining space.
Ocasek moved the dining table to another area of the great room and replaced the cabinets on the old interior kitchen wall with a bank of cabinetry along an exterior wall in the living area. The new cabinets add more storage to the small kitchen footprint, and the countertop creates space for the coffee bar the owners coveted but didn’t have room for in the old kitchen.
Ocasek painted the cabinets in Sherwin-Williams’ Evergreen Fog to tie the interior space into the exterior vistas. She opted for frameless cabinets with features like rollouts and utensil pullouts to maximize the storage space. And because the owners were working with a tight budget, she chose a lower-cost MDF cabinet line, lighting from Home Depot and Wayfair, and vinyl plank flooring.
The layout changes opened up the kitchen considerably. But Ocasek and the homeowners still hadn’t achieved the bright, airy space they envisioned.
The problem, Ocasek decided, was the tongue-and-groove ceiling throughout the kitchen and great room. It made the space feel dark and pulled attention from the dramatic wall of windows. But altering that type of vintage wood ceiling takes courage. So Ocasek used 3D design software to show the homeowners what the kitchen and great room would look like with different ceiling options.
“Ultimately, they decided they didn’t want the dark wood ceiling because it made the room feel so dark,” she says.
The homeowners liked the texture of the tongue and groove, so Ocasek painted it white. For contrast, she stained the original orange-toned wood beams and woodwork a darker color.
“Now, it’s not only the biggest room in the house, but the brightest,” she says. “It’s a very social environment. The kitchen, the dining table, and the seating area are all open and fluid.”
