After 18 years in the same house in Donegal Cliffs, Bruce and Leslie Duff knew it needed some updating.
Their three children – ages 26, 24 and 22 – had left home and they were spending a lot of time entertaining their friends. Leslie noticed a problem during their frequent dinner parties.
“We’re empty-nesters and now that the kids are out of the house, we have a group of friends that we like to get together with regularly,” Leslie says. “We realized that we all huddle in the kitchen and nobody leaves. I said to Bruce, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a more spacious kitchen that is conducive to entertaining?’”
Kitchen Before
The couple talked it over and decided they wanted to stay in the home at least another 10 years, so remodeling made sense to them.
“We love our neighborhood, we love our location and we just didn’t want to leave Dublin,” Leslie says. “We’re homebodies by nature. We’d much rather eat a steak and a baked potato at home than go out. We looked at our lifestyle and realized we’d probably use it a lot.”
Their original idea was to knock out the wall of the dining room to make a larger kitchen, but, with the help of Dave Fox Design Consultant Steve Dempsey, they came up with a plan that involved the entire rear of the house, including the family room.
The small-ish project they initially planned on quickly snowballed.
“We said, ‘Do we want to just reface the cabinets and get granite countertops?’ Then we said, ‘We really don’t like the low ceilings and we don’t like the lighting.’ … One thing led to another, as it usually does in remodels,” Leslie says.
The remodel they ended up with has become a showpiece for Dave Fox, even appearing on the 2013 NARI Home Improvement Showcase tour.
“It was a classic case of the dining room in the back of the house and the kitchen in the middle back of the house,” Dempsey says. “They just wanted to make the kitchen bigger and more useful for entertaining. We removed the laundry room and moved it to another spot, which allowed them to have more of a mudroom/laundry room. … I was able to come up with a design that really fit what they wanted to do.”
Removing the dining room wall and using that space to expand the kitchen was the biggest change. They converted the old, seldom-used living room on the front of the house into a formal dining room.
Moving the laundry room allowed the entrance to the family room to be opened wide enough that the fireplace is visible from the kitchen, which was Bruce’s goal, Leslie says. Hardwood floors throughout help connect the spaces.
One of the couple’s priorities was blending the remodel in with the rest of the house, which was built in 1982. New maple-stained cabinets kept the home’s original feel.
“Though it’s an update, I don’t think it’s too updated for the rest of the house,” Leslie says.
The low soffits, which made the room feel smaller, were removed to make the standard 8-foot ceiling seem higher. Can lights add brightness to the space without adding bulky fixtures.
“In-home lighting is something big that our company works on to get rid of shadows and dark spots,” Dempsey says.
Leslie says she appreciated that Dave Fox worked to reuse some of the original elements of the home, including doors and trim. Some of the kitchen cabinets were repurposed in the new laundry room.
“We try not to waste anything,” Dempsey says. “What the homeowner doesn’t use we donate to Habitat for Humanity.”
The Duffs are thrilled with the results.
“We live in the back of the house now. It has everything we want,” Leslie says. “We’ve also put a recessed television over the bar area and everyone can sit there while I’m preparing some food on the island.”
Their friends have admired the results, and some are planning their own remodeling projects as a result, she says.
Lisa Aurand is editor of Dublin Life Magazine. Feedback welcome at laurand@cityscenemediagroup.com.
