Wide Open Spaces
Seven years ago, just before their son was about to start kindergarten and their daughter was still a toddler, Kristine Korva and Kathleen Crowley left Capitol Hill and moved to Montgomery County. They chose the River Falls neighborhood in Potomac for its good schools, family-friendly environment and proximity to highways. “It has a suburban feel, but with easy access to the city,” Korva says.
The five-bedroom, 1973 Dutch Colonial was move-in ready, but Korva and Crowley knew it would need updating at some point. “It was very compartmentalized, and we wanted an open-concept kitchen/family room where large groups could gather,” Korva says. After several years in the home, they took the remodeling plunge in 2018.
“We didn’t need more space, we just needed to use it smarter,” says Korva, who relied on the husband-and-wife team of Shahnur Bostan and Elena Romero of Axis Architects in Rockville and Gaithersburg-based Finecraft Contractors to make it happen. “Our goal was to rearrange the first and second levels without adding square footage or sacrificing a bedroom or living area,” Romero says.
In the center of the first floor, a big block containing the laundry room, coat closet and pantry divided the kitchen and family room and cut off circulation. The key to opening it up was moving the laundry room upstairs. The architects reconfigured the master bedroom closet and bathroom to make way for a full-size washer and dryer.
With that problem solved, and two massive steel beams in place to support the second floor, a new pantry, closet and mudroom were built along the back wall, behind the kitchen. These modifications and the elimination of an original breakfast nook made way for a wide-open 15- by 23-foot kitchen, where an 11-foot navy blue island anchors the room and is the center of the action.
“They said that they didn’t want a boring kitchen,” says Romero, who chose a color scheme that combines bluish-gray cabinets, white quartz countertops, bright yellow counter stools and a bold Moroccan-inspired backsplash tile for a fun, fresh look.
Looking back, the couple wouldn’t change a thing. “It’s completely ideal,” Korva says. The family eats breakfast, lunch and on-the-go bites at the island, and enjoys the dining room off the kitchen for family dinners. “Now we use the dining room, which we hadn’t really done much before,” Korva says. “I feel like we are taking full advantage of all the rooms in the house.”
