The redesign of a house into a home starts with the people who live in the space. For a designer, a dream project is when you get to know a wonderful family and re-design an entire home to meet all of their needs. If a floor plan does not work – we change it and, for this project, change we did – from top to bottom!

A Warm Welcome Awaits!

The home, a circa 1918 brick English Revival, had 3 previous owners all trying their best to retain the original gracious bones of the house while adding and reconfiguring for their needs resulting in a warren of interior rooms. While the exterior was charming with lush and expansive gardens, the interior did little to temp modern family living. Our first challenge was to create a large open area that offered generous kitchen space and family room so the 3 young children could be close by. The original plan had a dining room attached to the kitchen through a butler’s pantry in between 2 stairways.

Original Floor Plan

New Floor Plan

In the existing floor plan you can see how the kitchen was disconnected from any of the actual “living” spaces in the library or living room.  There was no casual TV area for the family to congregate. The new plan we came up with removed the staircase to the second floor and re-located a stairway to the basement, creating a large open kitchen and family room. The new space is perfect for a young family. We re-purposed the original living room into a large dining room located just off the kitchen and created a first floor bedroom for visiting grandparents.

Original kitchen

Kitchen and family room ready for modern living

How more friendly this space is to entertain! As we all know, everyone loves to hang out in the kitchen, so we made the new floor plan work with that in mind. The separate dining room, which gets used far less in everyday life, still offers a roomy place for more formal dinners and family holidays.

Part of old living room becomes….

new dining room

I love to share before and after photos because it truly illustrates how thoughtful and creative we are here at Daher Interior Design – not only does this new, rejuvenated floor plan flow effortlessly from room to room, it also compliments the original style of the house while making the entire space casually comfortable. Try and spot all of the original details of the house we tried to preserve – did you find the original flooring? How about the way we mimicked the pattern of the floor with new molding on the dining room ceiling?

Far end of old living room becomes…

new guest room

This English Tudor was truly a joy to work on, allowing our creative juices to flow as we designed all of the interior architecture, millwork and furnishings – all the while working with the contractor, homeowner and all the various subs to make this a forever home for our clients.

Log on to our website to see additional photos of this completed Cottage Farm Estate and stay tuned for my next blog to see more of this amazing house transformation!