The challenge in this project was to turn a kitchen with poorly laid out work areas into a space that the whole family could join in the preparations without changing the size of the kitchen. Reorganizing the circulation, placement of the appliance and opening the kitchen to the dining area was the answer to the problem.

Statement from the owner, Deb Jacoby-Twigg: “On the bright side, I can honestly say your design changed our family life. You know that old expression “the kitchen is the heart of the home.” Well, in our home, the BAR that extends from the kitchen is the heart of the home. Every school day begins with the boys eating breakfast at the bar and me bustling around in the kitchen, serving them breakfast and also packing their lunches and daytime snacks. Depending on her schedule, Mia sometimes joins me in the kitchen space and we’re all interacting together as we start the day. I can no longer imagine starting most days any other way. Entertaining is completely transformed as well. For larger parties, the bar serves as a buffet self serve “line” (we remove the barstools for that) and that tends to be mostly at holiday times. The openness makes parties with large groups really easy. We can have people in the kitchen, the living room, the dining room and still everyone is really kind of all together and yet there are the smaller groups within the larger group. As far as prepping for anything, Mia and I enjoy working together in the kitchen as we did not with the old layout and we don’t crash into each other competing for the only corner that used to work. With the extra counterspace on both sides of the sink, it just flows. We get loads of compliments on how beautiful our home is. More frequent for us than large parties is the more intimate small group dynamic with friends. We are very close with another family in particular who come over often on Sunday afternoons. Everything starts at the bar. I am always standing in the kitchen prepping and serving and they are always sitting at the bar and it’s just a great dynamic. We spend a lot of time at the bar with appetizers and wine while I cook dinner, then we move to the dining table for dinner, calling the kids over to join us. We might stay at the table a long time or we might move to the living room and watch a movie together on our obscenely large flat screen TV which completely fills the LR side of the bit of wall between the kitchen and LR. Our close friends are big movie lovers like we are and that’s a great way to end an evening together, sometimes.”