Transform Your Kitchen: Expert Interior Design Tricks

0:05Summertime is the busiest time for kitchen redesigns and remodels. I was like, why do you guys think that is? Is the season for it? I kind of want to get in a fight with architects. Because who on earth is drawing these main spaces like this? Kitchens? There's no need for a 14-foot kitchen or a 12-foot kitchen. One of my favorite projects ALID has ever done. Yes. Yeah. I love this. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Dear Alice. Today, we're going to be talking about kitchens. We know that it's summertime and you guys might be working on projects or you might be anticipating a new big kitchen project.

0:43You're like, where do I go? Who am I in this process? So we thought we would do an episode for you where we get five or six really great kitchens that we've designed over the years that teach different principles. So that if you are anticipating a new kitchen, making updates to yours, you can lean into some of this expert advice that we're going to give you to help solve some of your problems. Each of them illustrate very different things. So we're calling today's episode expert tricks for kitchen transformations. And we're going to take you through six of some of our favorites over the years that I feel like are enduring because the kitchen is one of those things that, let's be honest, it's probably the most expensive room in the house.

1:22Yeah. Appliances and all in. So wherever you are in your kitchen journey, maybe you don't need new appliances. Maybe you do. Maybe you're going to be all in and, you know, kitchens cost what houses used to cost. So we just want to make sure and help you navigate this huge decision with some of the better decisions that we've made over the years. So that's today's episode. And I just want to say to all of our design professionals out there, you guys have to check out the trade program. It's amazing. Suze, tell them about the trade program. I've said it here before. I'll say it again. that if you are a designer, you're not hooked up with our trade program, you need to get there because we not only do exclusive product that you get like a front row seat to, that's the stuff that we're creating, that you want original stuff in your projects.

2:08You're not going to be able to shop it. They won't be able to shop you because we're the only ones that sell it. So please, you get exclusive on that. Plus you have somebody like in your back corner at all times. We have We have amazing reps to the trade program that will help you with your ordering, your sourcing, your tracking. Anyway, it's just like having a design assistant with you all the time and you get access to all of our vendors. So it's very exciting and you should absolutely. If I was on my own designing stuff, like you'd be stupid not to use our to the trade program. So how you do it, though, is you go to our website, you go to design service tab, and then you just go down to the to the trade application, sign up and we'll get to you.

2:49awesome thanks so much sue so like jess mentioned uh the summer summertime is the busiest time for kitchen redesigns and remodels like why do you guys think that is is the season for it it seems like a really nice time to just rip it out and you know because you're going to be without a kitchen let's be honest yeah um right don't you think you might be painting you might be airing out the house you might it's just a lot of work going on and let's be honest in the summer you can like eat out of a cooler or at the pool or you're just more mobile and you have all the kids it's pretty quality during the holidays you have to have a kitchen so true right and you're entertaining more and that sort of thing but i feel like summer is for being outside and playing and that sort of thing i don't know about you like even just like going i'm cleaning my house i'm way more likely to just be like okay we're just gonna dust and clean everything off because it's summer i can like anyway you just get in a mood i get in a mood like this time of year summer projects are It's always the same growing up.

3:46I feel like we've been wired for summer projects. It's so true. And yeah, things are okay to be in disarray because like we're all outside anyway. So it's not a big deal. Nobody's wearing pants. It's summer. We're on vacation. Yeah. House of Boys. Absolutely. Okay. Should we jump into like our first kitchen? Yeah. Let's do it. Awesome. Okay. So this is House of Kennedy. One of my favorite projects ALID has ever done. Yeah. I love this. This is a remodel we did on a house built in 1990. Right. Yep. And we completed this remodel in 2019. And this was a really just young, hip gal that wanted to take this 90s house into the current century and just make it really, really chic.

4:29And she was all in for design. So we were really trying to maximize the footprint. It wasn't a huge home. But I think some of the design tricks here were, first of all, an eight-foot ceiling. Right? We didn't have enough storage. She wanted something that felt really, really original, but she had four kids and so it needed to be durable. She wanted to be able to have everybody come together for dinner. And so we came up with this really fun detail of on the opposite side of the island where you usually see bar stools, we did a built-in banquette. We built it right on to the end of the island, pushed her dining table up and then surrounded that in chairs.

5:06So not only can she fit the four kids, mom and dad, but she can have the in-laws over, Or this could all be adults and you could put the kids at a kid table. So for a small space, this really packed a punch. We didn't use any cans in the ceiling. We did pendants dropping over the island and the dining table. And I think one of the biggest, I'd say, keystones of this project, when you think about House of Kennedy design, was that floor-to-ceiling storage solution that we came up with. Yeah, the floor-to-ceiling storage is amazing, especially with the eight-foot ceiling. We've done this in a couple.

5:39But we did this again in our sugar house project, also a short historic ceiling. And what that does is whenever you can create a tower, again, it's just like that high-waisted long pair of pants that you just never see the end of. And it just completely elongates. And you forget that it's even in the ceiling because, again, just that height is so crucial. Another cool thing, I think, with that, all the cabinetry, for it to be durable, we actually did a metal cabinet with an automotive finish on it. So as far as durability was like so fantastic on this. And if you guys aren't watching this podcast, you want to watch it on Spotify or YouTube because we're going to show you visuals of the project.

6:16But if you can't watch it right now, picture it in your mind because it's breathtaking. It is breathtaking. Yeah, that floor to ceiling automotive finish surrounded. We did a detail. I think you're getting to that. It's just that gold pinstriping detail around each of the doors to again elongate that tall rectangle. And we didn't cap it with a crown. Like we kept that frame going all the way to the ceiling. Just again, to just, if you kind of put another belt at that very top portion, like again, it would like squat it down a little bit more. And that was like opposite of what we were going for.

6:45So if you can like really stretch it to the ceiling, like that is what you want to do. We went tall on the hardware again, to just kind of draw your eye up. And the cool thing, I think a lot of us can relate to this because not everyone has a formal dining room. And so that space, the banquet and everything like that serves so many things. most people would just do bar stools along the banquette but we had the length to kind of pull into that next room to give her an actual yeah depth yeah the depth to just really like get some type of dining space so they could have like a dinner together but it all could it could be casual it could be formal anyway i love i love i love this kitchen plus it's rad to have a banquette in your home i think that's super cool remember when we were like laying it out because like we we had the windows out the front of the house um but we needed we don't want to like reduce any of the light.

7:33And so floating the shelves, which we've done in a couple of kitchens, I think is so fantastic because nobody wants to get rid of window or natural light. And so. That's really key. I want to just hang out here for one second. If you are renovating your kitchen, you don't ever want to get rid of windows. You never want to do that. You want all of that light coming in, bouncing around, making that space feel big, especially if you have a lower ceiling, but you can run floating shelves across the face of those windows and load those up with all of your beautiful white dinnerware or stacks of whatever it feels like a restaurant feels very culinary and a well-stocked kitchen so I love that trick I did it in my own house we did it here in house of Kennedy with the eight foot ceiling and it feels so stretched don't you think yeah I feel like we stretch the ceiling high I feel like we stretch the width of this and these are just a few design tricks that you can play and the other thing that we stretched we stretched the slab backsplash going all the way to the ceiling yep take it to the ceiling if we would have stopped that the ceilings would have felt like eight feet squatty squatty yeah so that's the trick with an eight foot ceiling if you guys are renovating any of your kitchens today it's you're going to pull everything all the way to the ceiling and it's going to look like you have money 10 feet ceilings yeah one other thing just real quick on finishes we not only did the metal cabinet we had a really amazing craftsman that did that again automotive finish but even on the wood we did like this kind of ebony ceruse so that you wouldn't like i don't know scratching and kids and all those things i think anytime you're like picking out finishes and things just make sure that it works with who you're serving so forgiving yeah cerusing is very forgiving so that's great we have some process pictures just to kind of show you the kind of the making of House of Kennedy, which I think is really, really fun to just kind of reimagine space and the depth and what you can actually fit into an area to fulfill a lot of different functions, which I think this house did incredibly well.

9:35I also want to point out one key feature of this automotive finish. It's high gloss. So it bounces light around. And even though it's kind of a blue gray color, which is also fun that we're a colored kitchen. I know. But that glossiness just kind of keeps things bouncing around. It gives it an elevated finish. It's really durable, but I just love that it bounces more light in. And I also feel like it expanded the feeling of the space. Yep. Yeah. So good. As you're making finished decisions during your remodel or however you're refreshing, like just be bold. I think it's fun. A lot of homes that we do have two kitchens, kind of a dirty kitchen and a show kitchen.

10:15but those are like larger homes a lot of us don't live in a home where we have two kitchens and so any of those like you have one kitchen like just pull out the stops do a color you know do a wild countertop do a crazy graphic floor because like we can you only got one we only got one well i was just gonna say you're gonna do the tricks that you would do in a powder bath which is all those things you just described the wow factor don't just have fun in the powder like Go for it in that kitchen. Heroes on heroes. It's the best. It is the best. Okay, moving on. This is my kitchen. I put it in here because I knew the teaching points that I wanted to pay forward to you guys.

10:54So my house was not a remodel. This is a new build that we completed in 2015. So here, a couple of the goals for me were I had a smaller footprint, but I do have tall ceilings. These are 10-foot ceilings. and one of the issues today is 10 foot ceilings is something that we do a lot on floor plans, nine and 10 foot ceilings. Well, kitchens, I'm even tall. I'm five foot eight, but I can really only reach the first shelf or the second. That third shelf is I'm on my tiptoes or I'm giving those glasses to my husband to put away from me or I'm getting on a stepstool. So a lot of your storage is half your storage.

11:33I want to say if it's in an upper cabinet is out of reach. So there's really no point in going cabinetry all the way to your 10 foot ceiling. You can do it in a nine foot ceiling. You can do it in an eight foot ceiling, but what are we going to do if we have 10 foot ceilings? So this is the point I wanted to pay forward with you guys on this podcast today. I did a soffit on top of my cabinets. You're going to want to watch this part of the podcast if you can. You're going to see it just looks like a great big almost freeze before the crown molding And there's a little panel, applied molding panel that sits on top of that.

12:06I painted that white, even though my kitchen cabinets are white oak. And it gives us sort of a finish work feeling up there. It keeps your eye moving all the way to the top. There's no dust shelf. And I feel like it looks like a really beautiful traditional finish in a transitional kitchen. I went with a white oak kitchen. So this is considered stain grade today. back when we were designing houses. We were probably, you know, started in this house in 2012. I remember talking to different editors and folks and they said, what are you going to do? You can't do a white kitchen. Nobody will publish it.

12:42And I was like, whoa, just a minute. Wait a minute. I got to reset my brain. I didn't know how to think about that. Everybody that we were working with at that time did white kitchens. And today I'll still say, I even asked Suze at the In the design center, what colors of kitchens are we doing right now? And really about 97 % of the people still want a white kitchen. It's just classic. Everybody loves it. They know they're not going to get tired of it. Maybe they were raised with one. Maybe they weren't. But for some reason, it is the gold standard in the mind of the women that we design for. They all love a white kitchen.

13:18So this felt kind of crazy to me, but I was up for it. I feel like it's my job to take these risks and to try something new. So I said, okay, I'm going to do a white kitchen, a white oak kitchen, and it's going to be stain grade. And so we used kind of a grayed out stain to pull all the yellow out of the oak. Did my favorite door style here. But then putting that big white, white frieze or soffit on top of it, I think I just really loved the pairing of those two finishes together. And I just thought I should pay that forward to you guys. if you do have a 10-foot ceiling and you're trying to figure out how to renovate, there's really no point in having that whole thing be a cabinet and go all the way up to 10 feet.

13:58It's almost too much too. I think the proportions of this are very beautiful. Even though I made this decision well over a decade ago, I still love this today. I do too. The other thing I did here that I wanted to teach you guys was my kitchen island. If you're watching, you can see where my cabinet island stops. And then I have brass legs that extend beyond that and give me more depth in the space, much like the House of Kennedy that we were just talking about. In the old days, they would just have a kitchen island be that bank of cabinets. You'd have your countertop material do an overhang and then you'd have bar stools up to that.

14:35My kitchen would look so tiny if I did that. So pulling that countertop all the way out into the space to my refrigerator, if you're watching, It almost made a perfect square. You can see beyond and through the legs, which is also a space expanding trick, right? Transparency is. And then the bar stools there at the end of the run. So that really pulled the space forward, made it feel larger. And then the other thing that really expanded the space was doing cabinetry doors on top of my fridge and having those be the same finish as my cabinets. I did do antique mirror on top of them. And then the fretwork over top is the same cabinet, cabinetry material.

15:13The mirror is another space expanding trick that's going to bounce light around. It's going to reflect your own kitchen back in itself and make it feel really big. And it's actually really nice when you're done eating to be able to make sure nothing's in your teeth. If you do get a knock at the door. Not a bad tip. Suze, I heard you got Cozier's new luxury blanket and I want you to tell us about it. I did. It's my very favorite new toy. It's the Bubble Cuddle Blanket from Cozy Earth. And it's this faux fur that is the softest blanket I've ever experienced. All my family, we all go downstairs and we watch movies together almost every night in the summer.

15:50And we all fight over our blanket. And I think I won. I have the Bubble Cuddle and it is so soft and furry. And I just, I love it so much. Cozy Earth also has amazing bamboo sheets that come with a 100 night sleep trial. So try them out. If you don't love them, return them hassle-free. There's also a 10-year warranty because once you feel this level of comfort, you'll want it to last a decade. So head to CozyEarth.com and use our code DEARALICE for up to 40 % off. That's CozyEarth.com, code DEARALICE. And if you get a post-purchase survey, make sure to let them know you heard about Cozy Earth right here.

16:26Because your bed should be more than a place to sleep. It should be your happy place. Cozy Earth makes that possible. Okay, so this is our Lover's Lane project in Dallas, Texas. It was a remodel. It was completed in 2023. When we got the plans for this house, they had it kind of segmented in lots of different rooms. Like there was a formal dining room that wasn't very big. They had a kitchen that was very, very small. But like it was a nice grand house, but none of the spaces felt grand. And so the biggest thing for this very young family with five children, young kids, was just like we all want to like be each other, see each other.

17:03And we entertain a lot. And they were really fun. So we've just started playing Tetris on the floor plan. And we're just like, well, no one's using the formal dining. Like we'd rather have that space. And so in this like little space, you can go down. There's like a sketch. Like that whole area was a tiny kitchen, a pantry, a formal dining, all those things. And we just kind of blew the walls out and just did a stretch limo of a thing to kind of get the kitchen that we wanted. We did a pantry behind actually because there's windows in the pantry. So you can kind of see that door on the left in the sketch.

17:37Oh, sorry. There's a door on the left in the sketch. And that goes back behind the pantry that just shares the wall with the range. And then where the dining room was, we created a keeping room, which we'll put some pictures on of that space in a second. But it turned out so, so amazing. And so that is my first tip, I think, as you're looking at remodeling a kitchen and just these important spaces. is just like what rooms are adjacent that you could like take over that aren't being used or being used as efficiently as it could be in a space that you really love like a kitchen. So I think that that was like the biggest win and before and after of this space is being able to like, I don't know, take space, unused space and use it.

18:18So who doesn't want a keeping room? I was just going to say, fashionably speaking, a keeping room is like a really small family room. And there's always a lot of gathering with kitchen time. So having an area that's just soft furnishings just to the right of the kitchen where the family could gather, they could play, they could hang out, they could, I don't know. Guests could come over. I'm like, that's where my sister and my mom would be while I'm cooking or things like that while the kids are by the TV. Nursing a baby or whatever. It's like they don't have to try and perch on a bar stool. They can be part of the conversation.

18:48And we've all been in all of our homes during Thanksgiving or any holiday or any family gathering. And all of the women, at least all the women, if not everybody, is always in the kitchen. There's always a room downstairs where everybody could sit and watch TV or watch a movie. But everybody's always in the kitchen. So this is awesome because you put a little petite family room just adjacent to the kitchen, which means some people can be sitting, some can be standing, some can be eating, some can be doing dishes. and it's you've got the ultimate gathering spot, which is exactly what the client wanted.

19:21Yeah. And they're not formal, formal people either. I think a formal person might want to get that formal dining or like created a formal living, but like they're very all inclusive. They're big entertainers and they just want to be together. So that's when like this interesting open floor plan makes a lot of sense is in this situation. So maybe rethink your space. If you're redoing your kitchen, you can look at that dated dining room if you have one that you never use let's get back that let's get back that square footage and do something that you will use make it a hard working area so kind of take inventory of the way that you're living in your home today because you've lived there long enough that now you want to redo that kitchen and let's let's take back those spaces and create something that will just absolutely be a game changer for you this one we also did a color just because they're a fun family and I love that we and you kind of saw this in Jess's kitchen and most of the kitchens that we design we do the panel front fridge and then we're it's usually adjacent other towers of function right so that you're either like using it as like secondary pantry that's inside the house or you're just you know just all the things that we need to store just like create a wall of it and just like maximize the storage when you do have that tall storage already happening for the fridge and freezer.

20:33So that's what's happening with that tall bank just over to the left of the range. And again, we just have like this really lovely island. We did do the floating shelves on each side of the range as well. Again, just because it's practical. She has young kids. And so just to plate and just have everything so close in proximity when you're working in that triangle, like is ideal, ideal, ideal. So, and they also need, they needed the pantry. They needed the kitchen we got a keeping room and they also wanted a soda bar so that's really really fun so again another thing to think of is like what are the spaces that you'd want like we had this like little soda bar and it had a window and we created a service window like near the pool so now kids can come up and get ice cream sodas through a service window and so anyway i'm like it's just like the ultimate party trick it really is and they picked lend me lend me some sugar come on were there neon love it they're the most fun okay yeah yeah that's right they met at an l.a concert or that was their first date so that's right yeah cool yeah yeah okay the next kitchen is the manchester house yes this is a new build um this just got completed last year yeah 23 we photographed it early 2024 yeah yep yeah let's tell them what the goals were here and how we accomplished okay so this was it was a new build so the architect drew this home very very large It was a lot of space, but the homeowner, she loves a cozy space.

22:01She loves charm. She grew up a lot of her childhood in England. Her parents are both from the UK. And so it's just like, how can we make this more charming, you know, while still having like a big grand capacity of space? And so I really love this. I love the fact that if you're looking on the screen, you can kind of see for the hood, we actually enclosed that whole space with marble. Like we framed it all out just to kind of make you feel cozy, like you're being hugged by the marble. Where if you didn't have that, it could kind of just like go infinitely to the very, very tall ceilings. I kind of want to get in a fight with architects because who on earth is drawing these main spaces like this?

22:41Kitchens? There's no need for a 14-foot kitchen or a 12-foot kitchen. It's an echo chamber. You're already having to do tricks to fur those cabinetry down. So if you are in the middle of working on a new set of plans, I would really question those heights over the top of your kitchen. Also, while we're at it, off topic, your showers. There's no need for a really high ceiling in a shower. It's freezing. Heat rises, and you're just going to be naked and afraid in a stone-cold room. It's too much. So I feel that way about kitchens and bathrooms. Okay, let's move on. Sorry. Okay, I absolutely agree.

23:15I just had to give a word to the people out there. no we employ the soffit like more than needed just because the ceilings are so so tall architects have not gotten the memo on this they think more is more and you know what we're paying for cubic feet here we're paying for this square footage yeah that then the designer is having to come down and make this house feel cozy like she wants you know and for some reason they just didn't get the memo on what makes a house feel cozy and ceiling height is the opposite of that i know we love a high ceiling but in in a kitchen we just we had to do a lot of tricks on this like on again on the left and right of the range you can see there are a couple steps that go there's a space behind the kitchen range wall and that's like their little playroom homework room for their kids which is darling but again yeah i actually love that detail but we did the transom so bringing in like colored glass just something interesting architecturally to make it feel cozy to again kind of utilize that height because again otherwise it's just like more white wall you know i don't know if people would have liked that to just add that transom it's so clever isn't that cute i love that so much and it really does i mean while it feels grand and restaurant-esque it really is so so gorgeous darling yeah when you when you talked about cozy though sorry i got got my bug on my uh no my trigger but it's true i will say like these huge kitchens like that island i want to say it's like a 12 foot island like it's huge like you cannot it's the most slabs and the lighting you don't think about these things when you're looking at just a plan of how that scales.

24:41Like to put to those lights, I want to say each of them are like 34 inches wide. You do not use a kitchen pendants anymore. You have to use chandeliers. Those are two chandeliers. And like we had to keep stretching. And it's hard to like, even the client when we're presenting, she's just like, why are they so expensive? I'm like, it's because it's a full fled chandeliers over your island. Like that's just what it has to be in like. You probably need more like extension chain or something like that too, to bring it down from that. So just, So you have to really pay attention to your scale when you're in that development stage because it gets, yeah, you'll fill some vacancies if you don't get the details.

25:15It feels normal in this image because the scale is right. And like, even though it's a 14 foot island and there's chandeliers over the island, everything is in scale and everything feels really good. So you got that really, really right. The materials are gorgeous. Yeah. It's stunning. I want to say when we were talking about like if you have a first kitchen, a second kitchen, or a really like functional pantry, again, all these like we have all the perimeter cabinetry is white or just like a really warm white. We brought in the wood tone on that island again, just to like add warmth so it wouldn't feel sterile.

25:51But again, just like how classic is the white kitchen in some combination with the natural wood. Tell them what kind of wood you use for those listening. Oh, walnut. Yeah. Yeah. It's a walnut. It's rad. It's really pretty. We actually had like walnut with the burl. We did some value engineering. I think it turned out amazing. And we did these like little metal like accents just again to add the decoration. But I love it. We go into the next couple of sides. It's so pretty. Don't forget the cafe curtains, ladies. You got to have the cafe curtains. I also like the band. So on the left side of the range, there's like almost floor to ceiling cabinets.

26:28But like that little band, is that some of that Calcutta viola? Yeah, and that actually, those open up, and you know how like we all have some type of catch-all space or, you know, that has like a computer and things. Anyway, this kind of became a little bit of a catch-all station, but we wanted to enclose it. That's rad. So, but you can see even with like all those breaks, that is us utilizing the height, and then there's a large freeze that comes down to make it. I mean, it's still, you're going to have to get on a step stool to get to that top cabinet just because we are so tall in this space, but you just have to get really interesting with your finish work to make it look like it makes sense.

27:01so and it does yeah it's beautiful it's so so pretty and again that they have like a little tea station area by that cafe curtain window it's so beautiful as you do so special as you do and you have the calcutta viola so again i i mentioned that too when you're picking out your slabs again it's like going to an art gallery and it's the most fun so some people will be more quiet Some people will be more loud, but I will say the last couple where the client has said, I want to be a little bit more calm. We've done calm and they've come back at the end and said, I wish I did the viola. I wish I did the, you know, something more audacious and wild.

27:41I mean, especially where your cabinetry, I think is going to be white. It's like you did with the walnut and the marble, obviously, like that's where you're creating interest. And yeah, I think that's, that's, that's rad. And it's so large too. Like if it didn't have like a more complex veining, like it would just be like, okay, it's just more white space. So I guess that's another tip to you that are working on your kitchen plans for this summer or for next year or whatever, is that you really want to challenge yourself on the slab that you use. You can phone it in with those neutrals, but the payoff isn't going to be the same.

28:16Even if you have an eight foot ceiling that you're working with, you're going to get way more payoff with using these more obscure slabs, these more opinionated slabs. It's going to feel more designer. It's going to feel more European, and it's not going to feel as typical. So go for it there, and you can use really classic finishes like a combination of white and walnut to get that designer payoff with the slab. I was going to say, too, with the crazy slabs, right, we have full height behind the range wall. Again, we're casing that whole thing in, but that doesn't mean that you have to go full height everywhere you can see on this like little tea station that would have gotten even more expensive so we did make it most people draw in like a four inch backsplash don't ever do that you're going to want to like at least go just go to the windowsill if you have like upper cabinets i usually they start 18 inches above the countertop at least take it to there you know so like give yourself like a more let's say i'll say a funky dimension or whatever, just don't do four.