This episode is about renovating the rare California Ranch in New England. You don’t see them here much, but Jenny created her dream kitchen in hers.

Katharine MacPhail  00:11

Welcome to Talking Home Renovations with the House Maven. I am your host, Katharine MacPhail. I am an architect who practices in eastern Massachusetts. Most of my work is additions and renovations to existing homes, and this podcast is meant to take some of the stress out of home renovations for people who might not have gone through it before. I interview other architects, contractors, vendors, and experts about their tips and experiences, and also homeowners themselves who have learned something from their home renovation and want to share it with us. This episode is a story of Jenny and her California Ranch in Massachusetts.

Katharine MacPhail  00:59

So tell me about your house. 

Jenny  01:01

So 25 years ago we bought a California Ranch, built in 1969. A California Ranch in New England, is not a very common thing. It’s one story and it’s an L shape. We really loved the house, but we never really did anything to it for a while. The kitchen had been redone once before, I think by the owner, sometime in the ’80s. The thing is, I was perfectly happy with it and I had no thoughts of changing it. My husband, I’m not sure why, wanted to change it. We’d talked about updating the house, there were little things I didn’t like…we have a TV room off the kitchen, and the guest bathroom was right in the TV room. Which was awkward, especially at a party for guests to go in the bathroom which is literally a cut out of that room. I wanted a bathroom there that people could use upstairs – I say upstairs, it’s for three or four steps, so it isn’t a new level – but that was a goal I had. We hired an architect to change the bathroom configuration, and we had a stairway that went straight down into the garage – straight down, really stark. So we wanted to widen it and make it nice. It had a linoleum floor and it was metal gray, it was just awful. So that was the kind of thing we wanted to change. The kitchen at the time had a wall, and it was separated from a very big dining room and a very big living room. The architect said, let’s take out the wall. So we did that. I think it’s good, but it’s…I don’t know, I’m not sure how I feel about walls. Sometimes it’s good to separate. So anyway, we started to design the kitchen, and the day that I was cleaning out a friend said to me, ‘I’ll help you clean out, you know, pack up your kitchen’. So as we were sitting there packing up the kitchen, she said, ‘Well, what are you doing? What’s the kitchen gonna be?’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know, my husband and the architect really had planned that’. I wasn’t really taking control. Then she said, ‘You don’t sound excited at all about what’s happening. Why are you doing this if you’re not excited about this?’ And it was an epiphany, that I should be excited. Then she said to me, ‘I’m taking you to a store. I want you to see what could be done here in this house’, because she had just done her kitchen. I don’t like to shop or anything, but she convinced me with her passion for how I should care about what was happening, that I should be into it. When I walked into the store, on the floor were these two panels, a red panel and a blue panel from this Canadian brand of cabinet that looked like car finish. 

Katharine MacPhail  04:08

I saw your photos. Yeah, that does look like a car finish. 

Katharine MacPhail  04:11

I feel like you don’t really want to mention that because I’m an architect, but it doesn’t hurt my feelings. It totally is an issue where sometimes architects say things like, I’m the designer here, so I know what should happen. So yeah, I don’t think there’s always a clear line. But I usually tell my clients ‘I’m not living here, you’re gonna live here’. So it should be something you can be excited about.

Jenny  04:11

I saw that on the floor and I was like, ‘Oh my God’. Then I met the people of Kitchen Interiors, Richard and Rob Kane. We started talking about the design…it wasn’t about the layout in terms of where it should be in the house, the architect had done that. But I think she had an idea of what she wanted. When I would talk about what I wanted, she didn’t really…she really had an idea of what she, as a designer, was going to do. So I think one issue to think about is, it would be one thing if the architect had a vision, and someone just said, ‘Give me your vision, that’s what I want’. But given that I wasn’t really excited about it, I felt like there was a problem. Do you know what I mean?

Jenny  04:59

That wasn’t happening, because…oh, so when I was thinking about the design for the kitchen, I always thought it was good to have a window at your sink, so you can look outside. But what I realized was if you’re looking out the window, and everyone else is in the kitchen…a part of the reason we knocked down the wall between the kitchen and the living room area was so I could be doing kitchen stuff, and not be cut off by people hanging out elsewhere. But if you’re looking out the window, that’s not going to help. So what I really, really wanted was a sink…we could leave the one on the window, because it was already there. So there’s no big deal in keeping that. And I said, I really want one facing the room on the island, then I can mostly use that one. I also wanted a spread out kitchen, really spread out, because we like to have a lot of parties. Often Thanksgiving would be like 30, or 20 to 40 people. We’d often have office parties for my husband, and I’d always offer my house for any kind of fundraiser event. So I thought, well, that would be great to be able to host. The design I wanted was for a big event, so I wanted everything spread out. And that’s not like standard, I think.

Katharine MacPhail  05:06

What do you mean by spread out? 

Jenny  06:38

I mean, so there was a lot of room. There was a fridge, two sinks, and two dishwashers. I wanted the oven far away, like on the opposite end of it, because we were always bumping into each other in the old kitchen the way it was arranged. So I really wanted it so no one would ever be bothered. Like, you could be getting out a turkey at Thanksgiving, and if there was a little kid there getting a drink, you’re not gonna be like, ‘No, no move out of the way, I have big turkey’. Because that’s what would happen. There’d be so many people in the kitchen for some reason. So I wanted it far, far away. So that is not like a standard…that was something I really wanted. 

Katharine MacPhail  07:23

Yeah, if having the whole turkey prep area be in the more common getting a drink area is something that bothers you, planning for that is great. 

Jenny  07:33

So that was one of my goals. Anyway, so I go to Kitchen Interiors. The house, as I said, is from 1969. If I had an older house, I would have a different design aesthetic. But for that house, you know, I love diners, I love googie architecture. So that’s why the car design. I was like, ‘Oh, we could do anything here’. And I love color, I almost have no white walls in any house, or any wall anywhere. I don’t like white walls. So for me to have cabinets of bright, bright colors was pretty standard, actually. What I was able to do with them was to work on their computer software, and design it in the colors and the way that I wanted to do it.

Katharine MacPhail  08:22

This is at the kitchen place?

Jenny  08:23

Yep, at the kitchen place. The architect had done the other part. And I think it was…I didn’t hire the architect, my husband had heard of her first. So I think if I had said to her initially, ‘I don’t care about the rest of it but I do think I have a vision for this kitchen, and since I’ve been in this house for 20 years I really know what I want and what I don’t like in my current kitchen’, it would have been different. So I’m not blaming her. I just think it would have been better if I had been the one to find her, because of the kitchen. Because I really cared. 

Katharine MacPhail  09:01

Yeah. Well, you know, it’s great that your friend happened to come over to help you unload the cabinets. 

Jenny  09:06

I can’t even believe it. And the crazy thing is, we were not that good friends at the time. We were just working on something together, and she heard about our plans to renovate. So I’m really grateful to her, because it wasn’t like my best friend saying ‘I’ll come over and help you’. This was like, ‘just let me help you, I want to help you’. So she fixed the whole problem. I have what I have because of that. And I do think there’s a lot of things like that, where these random comments or random friends can really affect what happens in your design, because there’s a lot of little details that you might only notice over time. Anyway, I loved working with Rob. The cabinets I wanted were pretty expensive, and he really wanted to make sure I really loved what we were doing and wasn’t just going for the thing that immediately caught my eye. One day, we had designed the kitchen in a different, much more regular cabinet. I’m sitting at his desk across from him and I glance over, because they still have the red and the blue sitting there, and I just said, ‘No, I can’t do this other thing, I have to do this’. And he laughed and said, ‘I was just trying to save you some money, but okay’, you know. But he also knew that it was a very, very bold kitchen. Any professional, I’m sure would be like, are you sure you want to do this? Because you’re really making it for you, and someone else might not like it. And given that it was a brand new kitchen, if someone were looking at the house, they might not want to spend that money if it wasn’t what they liked. I said, ‘Oh, I’m not selling, don’t worry, I’m not selling’. Then a few years later, we did actually put the house up on the market. When COVID came, we were spending time in New York, and we were just not spending that much time there. So we did put it on the market. But it was only on for a week before COVID hit, and then we came back and spent the entire year and a half there. I was so grateful that we didn’t sell it, and I just love the kitchen even more because as we all know we spent a lot more time in the kitchen in this last year and a half than we had ever done before. 

Jenny  11:34

So, I’m really in love with the house now. I liked it before, but I never expected to be forced to be there all the time and have that be my world. So I’m very grateful that the timing worked out and nobody bid on it that first week. 

Katharine MacPhail  11:34

Right. 

Katharine MacPhail  11:49

Did anybody have any feedback on the kitchen, when it was on the market for that week? 

Jenny  11:54

I don’t know. I don’t think anyone came in and said ‘I love it, I have to have this kitchen’. I like it, but I think a lot of people might not. They might not like all the colored walls. But that’s a lot easier to say, ‘I want white walls, I’ll just repaint the walls’. In the kitchen, they’re very good cabinets and all that so someone would have to be in big pockets to say I’m gonna buy this house, and I’m gonna redo this five year old kitchen. 

Katharine MacPhail  12:19

Yeah. The photos that you sent me, were those renderings? Or were those actually photos of the space? All of them were real photos of the space?

Jenny  12:27

Yeah. 

Katharine MacPhail  12:27

Wow. They look like they were renderings. It had that kind of quality to it. 

Jenny  12:31

Well, they’re real. It looks like a cartoon. 

Katharine MacPhail  12:33

Oh, yeah. I don’t know cartoon. But yeah, it doesn’t look like…it has this kind of surreal quality to it. That’s pretty cool. 

Jenny  12:42

Yeah, it does. The funny thing is when people come in the house, it’s a regular house but the living room has vaulted ceilings, about 12 feet tall. When people walk in to see that, it is always sort of amazing. But now, every time someone comes in through the living room and sees the kitchen for the first time they’re always like, Oh my God. They don’t expect this thing. I think what you’re saying is true, it does look surreal. The furniture that I got from ABC Carpet in New York City is also kind of space age. It’s all really comfortable, but it looks very simple. Great colors again, also. 

Katharine MacPhail  13:45

When you wanted to do this whole kitchen shift, was he okay with that? Was that an easy transition?

Jenny  13:54

Yes, because I was so annoyed about the whole thing.

Jenny  14:02

So he knew, and you knew that you weren’t very happy, but until your friend came over you hadn’t really done anything about it.

Jenny  14:11

I think maybe what I needed was someone who was more willing to work with me. That’s all it was. The design of the rest of the areas were fine and good, it’s just the finishes, I guess you would say. The finishes and also where the appliances were being put. 

Katharine MacPhail  14:29

So pretty much everything about the kitchen. 

Jenny  14:31

Yeah. I could have done it through an architect, but it just didn’t happen that way.

Katharine MacPhail  14:43

Okay. So do you have any advice for other people going through this kind of thing? 

Jenny  14:48

Well, I think actually that it is a long process. I knew I wasn’t into doing it, but I really didn’t want to spend all my time looking at kitchens and figuring it out. So my friend did help me by sending me to a place that was a good fit for me. But I do think it takes a lot of time. And I think it doesn’t make sense to rush it. So for example, we have a house in Vermont, and the year that we bought it it was an unwinterized cabin. And, I was like, that’s fine but my husband’s like, no, let’s redo the house. So we got a contractor that our friends knew, and we were all set with him. And he said, I’ll do it in the winter, and you’ll be ready next summer. But it turned out that that didn’t happen. So we lived in the house the next summer. And by living in the house, we saw many, many things that we ended up changing very much for the better. Whereas in the beginning, we hadn’t lived in the house. So we didn’t know. One example is there was an old kitchen, and because it was an old kitchen we were just going to leave it as it was. But as we lived there, and we put a porch on some other side of the house, we suddenly had an epiphany where we said, wait a second, if we move the kitchen over here, we don’t have to walk through the whole house to eat on the porch. And it seems not that hard to think of, but it was the walking through the house to get to the porch that made us realize that. And then that winter, we went on a family vacation in St. Thomas and there was a very, very big porch in the hotel room. And as all five of us were all on the porch, we thought, this is pretty big like, what’s the size here? We measured it, and we realized that the porch we had designed was much too small. We probably doubled the size of the porch after that. We’d seen big porches before, but because we were in the process of building, sitting on a porch that was a lot bigger than the one we were planning made us realize it was way too small. And that’s a change that I’m so happy with, along with the kitchen. Another thing was, the old kitchen had an arch to a hallway and another arch to the living room. We were just going to leave them both as arches. A friend came over to see our new house and she said wait, why are you leaving this open? If you leave this open, you can’t use this as a guest room. And immediately I thought oh my god, that’s so right. So we closed that up, and now it’s the guest room. She just casually said that, and no one had thought of that. Maybe we would have, maybe we wouldn’t have because we might have thought Well, that’s the TV room. Even if it’s just your TV there, you’d rather have a door than everyone hear what you’re watching throughout the whole house. So I’m really grateful to her for stopping by and having that design comment.

Katharine MacPhail  18:01

And you wouldn’t have made those changes if the contractor had been able to do the original design on time. 

Jenny  18:07

Right, everyone was seeing it through the whole year. Back to the other kitchen, in that case, I had lived in the house for 20 years. So there were things I didn’t like. The funny thing is when we were redesigning our house, I just didn’t feel like we needed to change much. We had a wood panel TV room, from the 60s or 70s. So the architect said okay, so we’re going to take off the paneling and we’ll paint the walls. And I was like, wait, why are we doing that? It’s fine. I just didn’t even know about updating, I didn’t need to do any of that. I mean, that was fine to do, but…I wasn’t the greatest client maybe, because I wasn’t trying to make a change. 

Katharine MacPhail  18:49

Yeah, it wasn’t your idea. It sounds like it was your husband’s idea 

Jenny  18:52

It was his idea, and I was fine with it all. But again, I was glad to move the bathroom. That’s been a good change. And of course I do like the kitchen now. But it’s a long process, so I think it took a while to do it, and then build it. I think they started redoing the kitchen when I was still picking the cabinets. They were definitely already in the house, had torn down things and moved things around. 

Katharine MacPhail  19:24

I think sometimes people buy a new house, and they want to finish it right away and move in. They often have an apartment, and they have to move out in three months or something very unrealistic like that. And yeah, that is kind of a problem because they’re forced to make these decisions really quickly. And, like you say, without really knowing the house very well or knowing how the seasons are in the house. 

Jenny  19:52

So maybe I would say, for advice to people…well, we didn’t have a kitchen for six months. We had a toaster oven in our front hallway, and the fridge got moved around to the living room. So it wasn’t great living there for that time, but it was good to be able to talk through it. There was originally going to be a mud room at the top of the steps, and then somehow we just said, maybe this should be a pantry, because we don’t really have a place to even put a mop or broom or anything like that. So that was what we ended up doing with Fred Gutierrez, the contractor. What I mean is, living there while the renovations were happening was chaotic, but it also means that you are present to explore and discuss these things. Like how maybe you don’t need a mudroom really, now that the kids are grown up, but that it might be more useful to have a thing that had the door also that closed? Because I do like doors. 

Katharine MacPhail  21:10

Yeah, I like doors.

Jenny  21:10

Even though it doesn’t look like I like doors, since when you go from the living room to the dining area to the kitchen there’s no door. The first time we saw the inside of our house, we were walking around our neighborhood where we had actually been renting for five years, and we were just walking by one day and there was an open house. And we though oh, we want to see what that house looks like. It looks very small from the front. But when you turn left on that L, there’s actually five bedrooms down there. The previous owners had done an addition – it had been a three bedroom house, and they added two at the end. So it’s a super long hallway. It’s not that great looking really, it’s too long. It looks like a hotel or something, it’s very narrow. You could actually reach both sides of it with your hands without stretching your arms. My kids used to see if they could somehow climb up with their feet, you know, that’s how little it is. So there’s things about the house that aren’t that fancy, in a way. It’s just like a long, long hallway from a dorm or something. But it’s totally fine, and it’s a lot of space. The other thing was that vaulted ceiling in the living room, dining room. When we moved in that area had a shag carpet, like from the 70s, but I think it’d been replaced because it was nice and clean. The kids used to roughhouse there, they could play nerf football with high ceilings. We had no knickknacks, everything was solid, we had three leather couches and a secondhand table that we got from my parents. So everything was as simple as simple could be, and it was great, because with three sons playing in the room it was crazy. There was silk wallpaper on the walls, but when my son was like two or three he would just casually pull the silk from various areas on the wallpaper. So that had to be taken off and painted again. They also broke the chandelier, but the chandelier that had been there was a green one, like over the pool table that the previous owners had left. So we really did nothing the entire 20 years that we lived there. 

Katharine MacPhail  21:34

Wow.

Jenny  22:15

We enjoyed it, but we didn’t fix anything. When we moved in, there was a TV with the screen that came down – a projection TV from the 70s. So it had some fun features, but they were kind of dated at the time. 

Katharine MacPhail  23:46

But they’re so dated that they’re pretty fascinating.

Jenny  23:49

We actually had the biggest TV for a while. Now everyone has a big TV, but the way the screen would come down from the ceiling was pretty special. The people that built it, you know, also liked to have parties. The house is built for parties.

Jenny  24:06

I’m gonna have some of the pictures in the episode enhancements so people can see what this looks like now, and what it used to look like. 

Jenny  24:14

One other thing I want to talk about two problems that we had. 

Katharine MacPhail  24:17

Okay. 

Jenny  24:18

So, what I didn’t realize about this kitchen when we renovated it was how loud it would be. It’s fine when we’re there alone. It is not fine if we have a 100 person party, or a 40 person party, or even 20. It’s just so echoey, and I don’t know what could be done about that. Maybe something about the sound mitigation in the ceiling, or in the walls? I don’t know. 

Katharine MacPhail  24:48

Have you spoken to any acoustical engineer or anyone about it?

Jenny  24:52

Good ones, and I think they did say there was something in the ceiling. But like it’s all brand new ceilings and lighting, so I was hesitant…maybe I just won’t invite 40 people over. 

Katharine MacPhail  25:02

That’s what you could do.

Jenny  25:04

It’s totally fine when we’re there alone, and with a small number of people. 

Katharine MacPhail  25:09

Yeah, with everybody talking it just gets to be a really loud space. 

Jenny  25:12

Terrible, it’s awful. It’s so unpleasant it hurts your ears. 

Katharine MacPhail  25:18

Oh dear.

Jenny  25:19

So I don’t know. We have wood floors…I would have liked something softer, like marmoleum or something like that. But since the space is so open, the transition from the kitchen to the rest of the space would look weird, and we needed something that would go with the cabinets that I have…so I’m not sure what I should have had there. But anyway, since it’s wood floors, there’s nothing to absorb the sound.

Katharine MacPhail  25:46

Are there any rugs or anything? 

Jenny  25:49

No, not in the kitchen. Well I have a little thing by the sink. It used to be quieter when we had the full wall to wall carpeting, which isn’t hip anymore. 

Katharine MacPhail  26:03

You had that in the kitchen? 

Jenny  26:04

No, no, we had linoleum in the kitchen. We had linoleum, we had a wall, and then we had wall to wall carpeting. 

Katharine MacPhail  26:12

Oh, I see what you’re saying. So then you took the wall down, and it all has to be the same. 

Jenny  26:16

And we never had a problem with the rug. So I could get another big rug, but it’s such a big space…I don’t think I would get the kind of rug that we had before, that the wall to wall carpeting with the shag. So anyway, I had no idea that would be a problem going in. 

Katharine MacPhail  26:42

Well, that’s good to think about. People often don’t think about how uncomfortable that can be 

Jenny  26:47

All the countertops, and we got a glass table for the banquette…it’s such a large space, is the thing. And there’s nothing to temper it. 

Katharine MacPhail  27:02

You mean, like when you combine the rooms, it’s such a big space?

Jenny  27:05

Yeah, you saw the picture.

Katharine MacPhail  27:07

Yeah. 

Jenny  27:08

It’s much bigger than most spaces in the house because there’s no doors, no walls. 

Katharine MacPhail  27:14

Yeah. Well, you know, I love walls. So that’s another reason to love walls. Was there another problem that you…

Jenny  27:22

At the house in Vermont…so at our ranch, we had had a problem with our dryer vent where it was installed underneath the dryer, turned, went 15 feet underneath the house, and then it turned up and left the house. One day, I opened the dryer and there was smoke in there. When I tried to get it fixed they were like, no, this is too many turns and it’s too long. They actually changed it to go up to the ceiling and through the roof, because it’s a one story house. Which maybe isn’t good either, but easier to get to and one less turn. So here in Vermont, I was like, I want a really, really short dryer vent. So we put the dryer room in a great spot. And we have a four inch dryer vent, because it just goes right out of the wall. But I didn’t notice that it was right next to the beautiful porch off the kitchen that I mentioned earlier, that we were on every day. So basically, you can’t run the dryer when it’s breakfast, lunch, or dinner, or if people are sitting there chatting. 

Katharine MacPhail  27:26

So you mean the vent is inside of the porch, or it’s just next to it?

Jenny  28:26

Next to it, but it’s a screened in porch. Not everyone has an issue with that, but sometimes when you think you’ve thought of a great solution, you really didn’t. I don’t know, maybe they could have gotten up to the ceiling there too. There’s no way to be perfect, that’s what I’m saying.  

Katharine MacPhail  28:58

That is true. Trying to be perfect is just going to lead to frustration, for sure. 

Jenny  29:04

Oh, and one other thing I wanted to tell you. So we’ve lived in the house for 20 years, and then we fixed it up. We didn’t change the footprint, but we changed the layout of the kitchen, the bathroom, the dining room, and the entry. There was a big closet in the TV room that stored tons of toys, and a lot of other things. That’s not there anymore, but in my mind’s eye…like today, I was picturing a book on a shelf in the old TV room. Maybe if I had moved I still would picture it in the old house. But it’s like, this weird hybrid of a new and an old house. It feels like we moved, but we didn’t move. Certain rooms are exactly the same, especially the bedrooms. So it’s just a very weird pentimento of like, is it new or old? In my mind, it’s still the old house. Obviously, I’m used to the new house. But often when I think, ‘Oh, I have to go get that’, I’ll picture the old closet, or a bookshelf in that old room that’s not there anymore. I think on one your podcasts, the woman who was talking about the emotional issues of change and redoing a house, that’s what I think of when listening to her. That emotional feeling of there’s still the old house somewhere, but it’s not there even though I’m technically in the same house.

Katharine MacPhail  30:32

Yeah it is a little disconcerting, it’s true. 

Jenny  30:36

Like the house I grew up in, I think back on it sometimes but it’s not like I’m in it right now and it’s changed. So that’s the difference here, when you redo your house, you have like a double vision of it in your mind. 

Katharine MacPhail  30:52

Yeah, that’s true. Well, you have all these memories of the old house. So in your mind, that still exists, but it doesn’t actually exist. 

Jenny  30:59

While you’re still there. 

Katharine MacPhail  31:01

That’s weird. I have the opposite, or maybe the inverse of that. When I’m working on a design for somebody and I go to their house to meet with them, in my mind it’s already done. It’s already the new way. So I’ll go around the corner thinking I’m gonna go up the stairs there, but then the stairs aren’t there yet. You know, that sort of thing. Because I spend a lot of time drawing it, and I’m in it while I’m designing it, so it’s kind of a reminder, like what you’re saying. 

Jenny  31:28

Yeah, I’m seeing it backwards.

Katharine MacPhail  31:32

You’re seeing the ghost of it, and I’m seeing the future of it.

Jenny  31:38

I think that the weird thing with the renovation is, I didn’t know that I wanted to help design it with the colors and everything. During that time, I was getting very into photography and doing that. I think it turned out that I wanted to create an art project there. That is not what most people want to do. When we had some parties a few years ago, people would say, ‘I love the kitchen, who chose this design?’ And I’d say well, I worked with someone, but I did it. And then they say, ‘Oh, I like the wall color. So perfect. Who helped you with that, who was the designer?’ And I said, Well, I did. And then with the furniture, ‘How did you figure out what to get?’ And I’m like, No, I figured that out. I get the feeling that most people don’t want to do that, or they might want to do it a little. But for some reason, I just wanted to do it all once I got into it. I was like, I want to create this space. 

Katharine MacPhail  32:34

Yeah, it seemed like it was pretty clear to you what you wanted, when you saw those cabinets. That was driving the whole project, in a way. So yeah, with the furnishings, that’s why I thought it was a rendering because it’s so it goes so well with it. You know? 

Jenny  32:50

That’s hilarious. 

Katharine MacPhail  32:52

So yeah, a lot of people don’t have the time or the desire to make all the decisions they need to make on their own. 

Jenny  33:01

And it turned out, if my friend hadn’t done that, I would have had some other design. It would have been nice, because it would have been a clean new kitchen. But I mean…I love that sink facing in, with everyone sitting at the island while I’m doing the dishes. And yes, they can do the dishes, but I don’t mind doing them. I just don’t like sitting in a corner. 

Katharine MacPhail  33:30

Right. Now that makes total sense. 

Jenny  33:32

It’s nice to still be part of the conversation. 

Katharine MacPhail  33:36

Yeah. And you have two dishwashers too, a lot of emptying of the dishwashers. 

Jenny  33:43

We only use one, most of the time. 

Katharine MacPhail  33:44

That’s true. 

Jenny  33:45

I’ll tell you another secret though. I also have two silverware drawers, because my husband could not stand it if you’re ever in his way. One thing that happens all the time, everyone does this, you just pull something out and then think like, ‘I’m just gonna stand here and eat that brownie’, or whatever. Then you’re blocking the silverware. So I bought three times the amount of silverware you need, the same set, and put it in two different drawers. But that way you never have to ask someone to move. So it’s very luxurious. To me, that’s like the biggest luxury, having the two silverware drawers. 

Katharine MacPhail  34:21

That’s a good idea. Because I do find that, especially when you’re setting the table for dinner, somebody will be standing there making salad or something in front of the drawer, and you have to keep asking them to move. Yeah, it gets a little frustrating.

Jenny  34:32

I guess someone could just have them on the counter in a container or something. But I do think that makes the kitchen work a lot better, if there’s not just one spot. 

Katharine MacPhail  34:45

I mean, that’s a great example of how you customized it to your life so it makes your life easier. 

Jenny  34:53

It’s not hard to do, and it’s helpful just to have the extra forks and spoons. I don’t usually use the second one, but at a party I really do. The reason I like having two dishwashers is, one year, we had Thanksgiving for 40 people, and the dishes were popping out of the sink all along the counter. I shared a picture of this, and my friends were like, ‘is that a stock photo of dirty dishes?’ and I said, ‘No, that’s my house after Thanksgiving when I had one dishwasher’, so that’s why I wanted two. It’s a big luxury, I’m not saying it isn’t. But that means that you can throw the pots in and just get things moving. 

Katharine MacPhail  35:46

Well that’s great. I wonder if you’d just gone with the original idea for the kitchen whether you would have actually stayed in New York and sold the house, because you weren’t really into the kitchen so much. 

Jenny  35:59

Yeah, that’s a good point. Like maybe we would have said, let’s just stay in New York, and we’ll sell.

Katharine MacPhail  36:14

So who knows? Maybe that changed your whole life. 

Jenny  36:16

It might have, because I was hesitant to sell it. It seemed so crazy, that we had done all that to make it perfect for me. Eventually we’ll sell it, but for now we won’t.

Katharine MacPhail  36:29

My main takeaway from what you have to say, is that you should really think about how you want to live in your space, and then kind of prioritize. I think people should prioritize what would make a difference to them and their way of living, and not care what other people might do. 

Jenny  36:46

I believe that there’s someone who would walk into that house and love it. Some people, I think it would just be too much for them. They would say, ‘It’s pretty, but I would be embarrassed to have this kitchen’, or something like that. But I do believe there could be someone who would come into that kitchen and connect with it. I don’t believe nobody would ever like it, because people are interested in it when I see it. It is fun to have something that bold, and that different. 

Katharine MacPhail  37:16

Well, at this point, you’re not leaving anyway. 

Jenny  37:19

No, but I mean, I like it because it works for me. I kind of like that it really shows my personality. 

Katharine MacPhail  37:26

Yeah, I mean, when I saw the photos I was like, Whoa, that’s a bold kitchen. 

Jenny  37:31

If you look at my pictures, there’s a lot of color in those too. I just love color, I always have bright colors. So it really does show how I feel about color. 

Katharine MacPhail  37:44

That’s great, I love it. People don’t usually do that, they really go for what they like. I think they’re kind of afraid to be baffled. But I love it. So good job.

Katharine MacPhail  37:58

Thank you Jenny for coming on and talking about your houses, I really appreciate your time. And thanks to you for listening! You are going to have to check out the episode enhancements for this project, because you have to see the photos. I’ve seen a lot of kitchens, and this one was actually a surprise. I’ve never seen one like it. Maybe I don’t get around that much. Anyway, check out the episode enhancements, you can get those in two ways. Number one, you could sign up for my newsletter. Why not sign up for my newsletter? You’ll get the episode enhancements delivered right to your inbox every Wednesday morning. You can also go to talking home renovations dot com, where I have those and other episode enhancements for past episodes, as well as transcripts and other information. So go check that out. And of course, if you have any episode ideas, or if you have any comments for me, you can email me at the house maven at talking home renovations dot com. You can also visit me on Facebook or Instagram at ‘talking home renovations’ and send me a message there. On TikTok I am ‘The House Maven’, and I think I might start posting some videos there again. I’ve been taking a bit of a break on that. The big news this week is that I am co-hosting a Clubhouse room on Monday nights, starting August 23, 6pm Eastern. So by the time this comes out, I will have already had a couple of rooms probably. Anyways, it’s with Mona Ying Reeves of Kickstart House, and we’re going to be co-moderating a room on renovation. So come on there to Clubhouse, and we can chat.

Katharine MacPhail  40:04

If you’re in Massachusetts, I could help you out with any kind of design questions you might have on my Ask An Architect design helpline. If you need some help, send me an email. Also, if you felt so inclined to leave a rating and a review, that would really be helpful. Well, I’m kind of unclear on what exactly that does but apparently it does help me with my engagement and that sort of thing. You could also subscribe, of course, and maybe you could tell your friends about it. The whole reason I make this is to help people, so the more people who listen to it and get something out of it the better, right?

Katharine MacPhail  40:49

Also this podcast is a member of Gabl Media, which is the most engaged AEC multimedia network on the planet. Check out the podcast and video channels that are a part of that network at Gabl Media dot com. That’s G A B L M E D I A dot com. And that’s about it for this week. This is a production of my architecture firm, Demios Architects. We believe architects are for everyone. So until next time, take care.

Episode enhancements, with before and after photos of the kitchen, can be viewed here.