Let There Be Light
Most design experts agree that it’s best to live in a house for a while before making any major modifications. This was not a problem for Ann Horton, who had spent many years in her 1933 brick Tudor-style home in Silver Spring before she decided to renovate the kitchen. Horton grew up in the three-bedroom house and now lives there with her husband, Brendan, and their two teenage daughters.
Horton enjoys cooking, baking with the girls, and hosting parties for her friends in their close-knit Indian Spring neighborhood. However, her kitchen’s original footprint was problematic. The layout was broken up by several doors, and storage and counter space were limited. But it was the lack of light that really bothered her. “It was so dark, and I am a person who needs natural light,” she says.
Horton had been contemplating a change for a long time, saving a folder full of inspirational photos on her computer and consulting with her sister-in-law, architect Jennifer Menassa Kirwan. With help from friend and neighbor Tom Linstrom of Linstrom Home Improvements, the renovation began in the fall of 2017.
Although the house sits on a spacious lot, an addition was not an option. “It was cost prohibitive and not necessarily the best solution for this gorgeous period house,” Kirwan says. The women had a better idea: convert the attached single-car garage into a new kitchen. “It’s something we had always talked about in my family,” Horton says. “My mom had that vision, that dream.”
A doorway connecting the garage to the kitchen was closed off with drywall before Horton’s parents bought the house in the early 1970s, but it was visible from the garage side. The builders broke through and widened the opening. They also raised the garage floor for a comfortable transition and built a two-step stair descending from the old kitchen into the new one.
Kirwan designed the new room, measuring 91/2 by 19 feet, to include a 2-foot-deep bump-out with a window where the rising garage door had been. It’s just the right size to fit a table and four stools, which was a top priority for Horton. Kirwan replaced the garage’s four original windows with insulated case- ments, and added two new windows overlooking the backyard and three on the far wall, maximizing light and views. “We use the back patio from May to October, and now it’s easy to have conversations through the window,” Horton says.
Three large beams accentuate the 12-foot ceiling. “They add character, definition and a sense of scale,” Kirwan says. The beams are wrapped in pine, which adds warmth and texture, and contrasts with the white cabinets and subway tile, black countertops, stainless steel appliances and cool dove-gray walls.
A fixed window near the peak of the gable at the end of the former garage also draws the eye up. Horton actually tried to cut the window from the budget, but Kirwan encouraged her to keep it, and Horton is glad she did. “To me, that room is like a cathedral,” she says. “The light in the morning is magical.”
