Sprawling ranchers make for some of my favorite projects, and this one is no exception! Square footage is usually plentiful in these homes but often times they are so compartmentalized, it feels unusable. With strategic changes to the floor plan — opening walls and closing others, a flowing, functional footprint can be achieved. By the end of the project, it’s sometimes hard to remember how the house was ever any other way! If you’ve been following on Instagram, you will have seen the structural and spatial changes we’ve made for this home. It’s now time to give a proper tour of what this house looked like when it was first placed in our hands!
The Kitchen
The kitchen was probably the most updated space compared to the rest of the house. White cabinets with a pretty simple door style and those little polished brass knobs are not the worst thing. Even the flooring appeared to be updated! But as a whole, still pretty dated. For the longest time I thought it had wallpaper, until I looked a bit closer one day and realized the walls are all hand painted with the floral motifs! The window treatments throughout the house were very heavy, causing a lot of natural light to be lost.
My biggest issue with the kitchen was how closed off it was to the rest of the home. Families want to be able to cook and entertain and not feel isolated from their company. Thankfully this home was set up perfectly to allow for that with the removal of the main wall, but this would required structural adjustments.
Mudroom / laundry room
I was pretty excited about this space because it has a large footprint and it was perfectly located between the garage, powder room, and kitchen. You can’t really ask for better than that! We have exciting plans for laundry cabinets on one side, and more of a mudroom set up on the other.
The Den
Like the laundry room, this space really just needs cosmetic updates. The footprint is great and it has large windows! But I was very happy to see the paneling come off. It felt like a heavy weight was lifted from the room! The one tricky part about this room is a large opening to the dining room on the wall opposite of the fireplace. It created an interesting circulation path and restricted furniture placement.
After a lot of back and forth, I presented the option of closing in the large opening. There was a second opening on the side wall near the laundry room and kitchen. Since this was going to be a more private family space, it didn’t feel like a loss when we closed up the doorway. In fact, once this was done, it made both the den and the dining room feel so much better!
Dining & Living Room
The dining room and living room were initially separate spaces. The dining room had openings from three entry points on three separate walls, which made it feel more like a large hall. The plan was to remove the wall that separated it from the living room. This would provide a stronger connection to the living room as well as the kitchen.
The living room was a long space that despite a whole wall of windows, felt very boxed in. Even with a standard ceiling height, the ceiling felt low, especially with a tall client! At the end of the living room was a full brick wall with a fireplace. I liked that wall as a focal point, but the scale was all wrong. The height of the fireplace felt strange as well as all of the negative space on the wall. It definitely needed a change!
entry & hall
Again, the entry had the perfect amount of square footage. It was closed off just enough to create a nice feel! The photo below is a great shot, as the wall on the right is now completely gone and behind it is the kitchen. There was also a small opening from the entry into the kitchen which we closed up to better utilize wall space for the new kitchen layout.
main bath
The main bathroom off the hall is near all the bedrooms and had a whole lot of funk! I sort of loved this wallpaper! It was pretty damaged though and once we got through the design concept, we realized it just wasn’t going to work out.
BEDROOMS AND POWDER ROOM
All of the bedrooms had a different color of carpet. Every room had a different wallpaper. But each one had coordinated the colors so exact, like this green bedroom! The powder room is actually over by the laundry and kitchen, but was another example of the wallpaper selections matching cabinetry, tile, and more.
The bedroom below is the closest to the master suite. After working through the floor plans, the clients decided to take the leap into a larger master closet. So this bedroom will soon be a gorgeous walk-in closet with plenty of storage!
the master suite
Last stop in the tour is the master suite! Another day, another carpet. The bedroom is huge and the bathroom is as well! However, the bathroom was very choppy with the existing closets. Adding to this jumble was the vaulted ceiling in the bathroom, but the walls only being a partial height. This creates a lot of visual clutter especially when multiplied by all the walls in this space. This bathroom gets a ton of natural light though, so between that feature and the ceiling height, I was excited to get to work!
moving forward
This project has been under construction for a few months already and there is progress to share soon. I’m also planning to start sharing more of my design plans and concept work to the blog so you can watch these projects transform! If there is anything you’d like to know about the design process, let us know so we can be sure to include them in upcoming posts!
If you have a project you’d like to discuss, feel free to contact me or book an appointment! I’d love to chat and see how I can help!
