Mitchell Home Remodel

The Mitchells wanted to update major pieces of their home to make it more inviting and functional. The kitchen was outdated and dark, the family room was uninviting, the guest bath was cramped and poorly laid out, and the laundry room was inefficient. Outside, the patio had a poor connection with the main interior spaces, the upper lawn area was hard to access, and the wood deck was deteriorating. Additionally, the plantings made the landscape feel crowded and chopped up, and the soil was compacted and poorly drained.

Our Design-Build and Outdoor Spaces teams got to work. To remedy the interior spaces, we changed the shape of the kitchen to make room for more windows, removed the lowered ceiling and added a skylight. We replaced the sliding glass doors in the family room with French doors closer to the kitchen, refaced the fireplace and added a window seat and a wet bar. In the guest bath, we expanded the footprint slightly, swapped the sink and toilet placements and opened up the enclosed shower with frameless glass. And in the laundry room, we changed the shape and configuration to give it better flow.

On the exterior, we pushed the patio out in a sweeping line that matches the natural contour of the hillside, replaced the wood deck with sand finish concrete and replaced the small flagstone pavers with large flagstone pieces set in a sand finish border. We installed new drainage, tilled the soil, replaced the invasive plants with native and low maintenance species, and moved several mature rhododendrons to screen the view of an EWEB water tank. We installed large stone treads to connect the patio to the upper lawn, created a small fenced-in area for the dogs using the old deck boards, and added a large patio cover with skylights just outside the new French doors.