Kitchen Remodeling
West Meade Revamp: Reimagining the Heart of the Home
A dated, compartmented kitchen opened up and rebuilt around a working island, with storage planned for the way the family actually cooks.
The brief was simple to state and harder to build: a porch the family would actually use for most of the year, not the six weeks either side of spring. That meant screening against Tennessee humidity, a roof that tied cleanly into the existing structure, and a fireplace substantial enough to pull people outside in cold weather.
Exposed beams carry the ceiling and set the character of the room. Getting them to read as structure rather than decoration meant working the framing and the finish carpentry as a single problem from the start.
The detail that took the most care is the one nobody sees: the tie-in where the new roofline meets the old. Done poorly it becomes a leak a year later, so flashing and drainage were resolved on paper before the first rafter went up.
