Before & After: A “Dated, Mismatched” 1930s Kitchen Gets an Airy Makeover with Stunning Green Cabinets
When Katherine and Genevieve moved into their Spanish bungalow-style Southern California home (built in 1933), they set out to find a way to honor the space’s past while also looking toward their future. This included the “mismatched but functional” kitchen, as Genevieve described it.
Initially, the three countertops and two cabinets were competing against each other for space and the eye. Additionally, a pocket-size laundry room divided the space. (Katherine said that while the room couldn’t fit more than one person at a time, it somehow had four doorways.) At the time, the pair was mapping out their future and wanted their home to be a space more conducive to their lifestyle.
“We are going to have kids, and though the kitchen was ultimately functional, we knew it could be improved to create more space for more people and be designed in a way that reflects how we operate in a kitchen (and laundry space),” Genevieve says. “We also just wanted to feel good about our home before we take a big life step.”
The couple enlisted the help of Loren Perry and Blaire McPherson, cofounders of the full-service design and architecture studio Studio Como in Los Angeles. For more space, they wanted to combine the laundry room and kitchen. When it came to aesthetics, the desired vibe for the new space was “California mission-style with a modern twist,” Genevieve says.
The design process started with Katherine and Genevieve sharing their design dreams with Studio Como. Then, the designers turned them into mood boards and floor plans and presented them to the couple. “Once the client selects a plan and design style, we spend a lot of time finding material, lighting, and finish options while also putting together a detailed 3D model for the client to start to see the vision come together,” Blaire says.
“There are original wood built-in cabinets in the hallway, and through another aspect of the renovation, we were able to relocate some of these built-in cabinets to the kitchen, which now serves as storage,” Katherine says. “We wanted the kitchen to flow with the rest of the house and not look like a newly renovated kitchen, and we think we accomplished this goal, as sometimes we struggle to remember what the house was like previously.”
But the process wasn’t all smooth and easy — one of the “trickiest problems” was figuring out where to put the washer and dryer once the laundry room was knocked down. “We designed a custom cabinet with pocketing doors to house the stacked washer and dryer next to the fridge,” Loren says. “Custom metal vents in the doors allow for safe ventilation of the units so they can even run while the doors are closed.”
Removing the laundry room wall isn’t the only detail that brightened the new kitchen. Colorful paint plays a major role, too. The two-tone cabinets are colored with Benjamin Moore’s Van Alen Green and Cloud Cover, while the walls are splashed with Super White. The colors blend perfectly with the Emser Tile Mythos white backsplash, the Caesarstone misty Carrera countertops, and buttery, white appliances.
The kitchen renovation took around five months to complete and cost around $110,000, the couple estimates. Katherine now describes the once-mismatched and disconnected kitchen as a “warm and inviting space.” Genevieve admits that the Studio Como team understood that she and Katherine were, as she says, “put-away people,” so they helped ensure that there was enough storage space so that the counters could remain clutter-free.
“The fact that they created a kitchen that is both aesthetically blended with the house and where everything has a storage space brings us a lot of joy,” Genevieve says. “It makes it more functional for us and easy to keep clean. The design truly reflects our workflow in the kitchen and laundry area.”
What do you think about this kitchen makeover? Let us know in the comments below!
