Sinks: Before and After
Welcome to Sinks!
Let me just name the elephant in the room: This is my favorite project I’ve worked on to date. Every project I’ve been a part of has been fun, interesting, and engaging but this is one of those incredibly special combinations of friendship, creativity, and eccentricity that made me feel like I was in my element.
This project also has layers of history that add what I would call “patina” to this renovation. Let me run through the details as quickly as I can:
This house was a family home for years, then was occupied by a solitary bachelor in the family, then after his passing was turned into an artist residency by my future clients. After years of housing international artists and supporting creative efforts, the house returned to a single occupancy family home during the pandemic. Because of the changing uses of the house, it gained quite the patina of art, objects and junk miscellany. Having actually been an intern for the artist residency over a decade ago, I was beyond thrilled to get the call to turn this house into the artistic retreat I had secretly envisioned it as back in my intern days.
When my clients moved in, they knew they wanted to update the home, open up the floor plan for entertainment, and bring a sense of nature that honored the wooded property where the house is nestled. My task was to help sure up the floor plan, kitchen design, and create a real visual story throughout the house. Since this house was a huge undertaking that was multiple years in the making, this will certainly not be the last time I write about this project. For this moment, I will do a general review of the before and after shots and look forward to writing about the hand made details and creative point of view in the future. For now, let’s dig in:
Sofa View
As you can see, one of the major transformative choices was to take the wall down between the kitchen and living room. This also meant relocating the closet pictured on the left to make room for the new refrigerator. Beyond that, we selected furniture that was easy to navigate around in an open floor plan, but still could anchor the room.
Living Room Entry View
From this view, the main point of interests are the blend of new and vintage furniture, the collection of ukuleles and the vintage card rack painted green peeking from behind the sofa. And while the white dog in the before picture was not photographed in the after photos, I did decide to integrate him into the new design and I think it really works!
Fireplace View
Another dog to work into the new design! It took some tweaking, but I actually love the contrast he adds to whatever space he’s in. Okay, jokes aside, I love the updates we did to this fireplace view. A little bit of refinishing and styling went quite a long way. This is a great example of the design choice to make the base elements of the room neutral and let the styling and art elements bring in the color and exuberance. And because most of the house is an open floor plan, it made using strong colors on the walls tricky. Luckily, there are a few moments where we added bolder colors peeking around the corner, like the peachy-pink paint color poking out of the back hallway.
Here is another view, pulled back a little. I love the sense of peace and calm that this room offered, with just enough art and objects to peak your interest. Incase you were wondering why there are no pillows on the sofa or chairs, feel free to ask dog #1 or #2 if they ever confuse pillows for chew toys. Fortunately, a colorful throw tucked into the back of the sofa allows a pop of color without tempting the local dog snoots.
This shot does a great job of showing how dreamy the light can be in this room. This is also a good moment to point out the refinished floors. Who knew this lovely Scandinavian-esque flooring was hiding under the previous stain and finish?
Kitchen to Living Room View
Onto the first peek of the kitchen! While it’s often seen as prudent to make your kitchen as classic and neutral as possible, I’m so glad we took a risk and let this kitchen represent the real design and heart of this house. I’ll get into more details soon, but let’s take a moment to enjoy the blend of colors and light here.
Kitchen View
This is one of those views that makes me say “I can’t believe this is the same house!” As you can see from the before pictures, we opted to move appliances, cabinets and completely rework this kitchen. Knowing that hosting parties and large gathering was important to my clients, this large island was the perfect place for food service, drop-ins and hang outs. It was important to me that this kitchen wasn’t just a plain space with decorative elements, but that each permanent element of the kitchen was deliberate to the aesthetic direction of the house. Once again, blending calm with quirky, I paired oak-front cabinets, and Zellige tile with colorful and funky pendants. Over all, this kitchen is exceptionally functional, fun, and relaxing.
Entryway
This is one of those rare moments in the house where we could really go crazy with color and pattern. Once we added in a coat closet, new front door, and a hexagon tile floor, we were ready to take a risk. After looking at dozens of wallpaper samples, the closest pattern we all liked was “Patio” by Pierre Frey. Our only umbrage was the scale and undertone colors. Instead, I opted to paint my own version with a larger scale that made sense in relationship to the tile and brighten up the undertones to be warmer than the original grey background. I love being able to have a laidback take on geometric patterns in this room in contrast to the more organic shapes and tones in the rest of the house. Our last details were the Schoolhouse ceramic flush mount lights adding a subtle modern element.
Dining Room
To clarify, this after photo was taken standing in the entry way, facing into the dining room, where the after photo was taken in the back of the dining room facing the entry way, in case anyone was feeling turned around. I’ll offer more angles shortly. In the meantime, the main point of this room was to open up the space for entertainment and gatherings. The oak table was made by a carpenter friend of the clients and is one of those pieces that are even more remarkable in person.
This is another great shot to see the refinished floors. This room captures so much of the laid-back, quirky feeling we wanted through out the house. I’m particularly fond of the metal bench with cut outs and the subtle yet sweet mobile hanging above the buffet.
I’ll leave you for now with this final view from the kitchen looking into the dining room and mud nook. I will highlight more details from this picture in the future, but for now, if you would like to see more photos from Sinks House, check them out here. If you would like to see more completed project, check out the Selected Projects Page.
As always, I thank my clients for trusting me to make their home something truly special. It was an honor and privilege to help this house reflect the joyous nature of my clients.
Lastly, if you are contemplating a remodel, refresh, or want to change your home but aren’t sure where to start, please reach out! You can fill out a form on the Contact Page or email directly at west.hollar@gmail.com
First consultations are held virtually and are free. Let’s make something special together!
-Aimee
**Design and photos by Aimee Kick via West Hollar llc. *Use of photos without expressed permission is prohibited.