09/29/2026
This kitchen is the perfect example of “don’t look too closely.” 👀
From a distance? Pretty nice. But once you actually started using the space, the problems showed themselves.
First off—corner cabinets and lazy Susans. I don’t like them. I don’t understand them. And I will avoid them whenever humanly possible. 😂
Then there was the island. Way too wide, leaving very little room to move when someone was cooking at the range. And somehow there were cabinets on THREE of the four sides.
Meanwhile, we had an entire blank wall just sitting there begging to be useful. On the other side of that wall was a mudroom that was arguably the size of a small kitchen itself, so we borrowed a little space from it and created a new beverage center—adding storage and function where there had been none.
We even extended the wall adjoining the eat-in kitchen room by just one foot. It doesn’t sound like much, but that one foot gave us room for another upper cabinet. And in a kitchen where storage was one of the biggest problems, every inch mattered.
The goal wasn’t simply to make this kitchen prettier, but of course always in the back of our minds. It was to make the space make sense.
Better circulation. Smarter storage. Thoughtful cabinetry. And a kitchen that works just as beautifully as it looks.
Beauty, reworked.
Photo cred: Summer Brader 📷 Downers Grove Photographer
