A previous renovation had shifted the main entry from the front to the side of this semi-detached house on a corner. PLANT’s ground-floor renovation and addition re-instated the front entry as the primary one, and leveraged the site’s access to light on three sides to create an open and airy kitchen, dining, living, and entry area. 

The clients are a young couple who write a popular food blog. We redesigned the ground floor to meet their specific needs for a test kitchen. They also asked for help with the classic problem of ‘so many things, so little space’. We incorporated many types of playful, built-in storage, including shelving, window seats, and the cabinetry flanking the entry and new stairs to the second floor. 

Exterior accent panels at the new entry feature an unconventional deployment of standard materials: using a repeating sequence of different ‘off the shelf’ cedar shingle shapes, we created a contemporary textural pattern that complements the more traditional shingling on the house’s upper floor.