The owners of a 30-year-old red brick Colonial in the Washington, D.C., suburbs had been putting off remodeling their eat-in kitchen for years when their fridge went on the fritz, forcing their hand. They hired Shayla LaFreniere, principal designer at Halcyon Interiors, who redesigned the kitchen and its adjacent butler’s pantry and mudroom with clean-lined cabinetry, customized storage and a sophisticated palette of dusty blue-gray, white and walnut.
Kitchen at a Glance
Who lives here: A couple with a tween and a teenager
Location: Centreville, Virginia
Size: 240 square feet (22 square meters); 17¾ by 13½ feet
Designer: Shayla LaFreniere, Halcyon Interiors
Contractor: Xtreme Painting & Remodeling
Before: In addition to the kitchen’s appliances reaching the end of their lifespans, its cabinet doors were literally falling off their hinges. And the countertops were frequently cluttered, as seen in this “before” snapshot.
“This is what the kitchen looked like pretty much every time I went there before we demoed,” says LaFreniere, who describes herself as extremely meticulous “not just as a designer, but as a person.” But the mess was fine by her. “If [clients] have everything put away and perfect [when I show up], I may not necessarily know what all the problems are,” she says.
In this case, LaFreniere could see immediately that the clutter was partly the result of the kitchen’s inefficient storage, which left the homeowners with no place to put their things.