Sharon Jochnau remembers strapping a safety lamp to her head and carrying baskets filled with laundry out the front door of her Warren home, down the stairs and along the path to her garage.
It was night. It was cold. It was the dead of winter. But, for Jochanau, it was a joyful time.
The kitchen, laundry room and adjacent areas of her 1983 home were being renovated, and her washer and dryer had been relocated to the garage. Any dirty dishes were similarly carried out to be washed in the garage utility sink.
"My refrigerator was in the garage," she said. "I had set up a whole pantry area in my dining room." Easy-to-eat foods were stocked there along with a toaster oven and microwave.
This was the setup for the five weeks that she and her family did not have access to their kitchen, laundry room or the entrance between their garage and the house.
"Some people find it difficult to be displaced," she said. "It made me so happy. It was just so exciting to watch it all evolve. When there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and you know you are getting what you dreamed of, it is worth it."
What Jochnau had dreamed of for the nearly 20 years she and her husband, Stephen, had owned their home was a kitchen without a massive built-in desk and without bulky faux wood beams at the ceiling line. She wanted an island without an embedded sink or cooktop, and cabinetry without the rustic look of knotty wood grain.
"I remember the elation I felt when they jackhammered my old kitchen tile away," she said. "It was like terra cotta tile in this hideous yellow color. They rose in the center, so it wasn't a flat surface."
In the realization of her dream of a kitchen with sleek, clean lines, this floor that was hard to walk over would be replaced with 12-by-24-inch gray porcelain tile in a brick pattern.
While the kitchen was updated within the same basic footprint, a walk-in pantry was added by taking space from what had been a tight hall leading to the garage, said architect Dawn Parker Heifetz, whose Scotch Plains firm DPH Designs reconfigured the Jochnau home.
The kitchen cabinetry integrates double doors that access the pantry as well as the refrigerator.
“The new cabinets are rift-cut white oak,” Heifetz said, explaining the linear grain pattern on the doors.
Most of the cabinetry is stained an espresso color, but a whitewash was used on cabinets beneath the center island and at a beverage center that includes an under-counter wine refrigerator.
The island, with seating for three or four, has a rectangular shape with a "waterfall" design. Here, the textural, leathered-finish granite used for its top "flows" over the sides and down to the floor.
"I wanted to be able to have seating at my island," Jochnau said, noting it wasn't possible to do so with her previous squared island that housed the kitchen's electric cooktop and a second sink. "I wanted it to be plain with no appliances."
The old kitchen cooktop was replaced by a countertop model from Miele. Jochnau, who enjoys cooking and entertaining, preferred the greater flexibility of a gas stove, so a gas line was installed to serve the new range.
The beams at the kitchen's ceiling line had to stay, but their appearance was changed.
“The beams are structural, so you couldn’t take them out,” Heifetz said. “They make sure the walls don’t move under the weight of the roof. They tie the whole roof and wall structure together."
"The ceiling height is 8 feet," she added. "They do help bring down the scale of the room so it doesn't feel so cavernous."
With the distressed, wood-look veneer removed, the beams were enclosed in lengths of poplar wood and painted white. Near them, small LED lamps on heavy wires are affixed to cables.
A powder room near the kitchen also was renovated, and the project involved a 142-square-foot addition at the front of the house that made room to reconfigure the floor plan of the 2,700-square-foot house. In addition to the new walk-in kitchen pantry, the home has a relocated laundry room, a new home office and a new mudroom.
The doorway between the garage and the house was moved three feet to make way for the new pantry. The change located the garage entrance to the house at the new mudroom. In total, the project gave the home a total of 667 square feet of renovated space, combining old and new.
Jochnau said the changes have vastly improved the way they use their four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bathroom house. Having a desk in the kitchen had been problematic, she said.
"I wanted a home office, and I wanted it out of my kitchen. I needed a space for our files and our documents, and I didn't like always sitting in my kitchen. It wasn't good for my waistline, it was too close to the pantry," she said with a laugh.
Heifetz said they worked on the redesign with such needs and others in mind.
“It’s a super functional kitchen because she cooks a lot. She’s got everything you’d want in that kitchen.”
What they renovated
The kitchen and powder room of a 1983 Cape Cod-style Colonial in Warren was renovated, with a 142-square-foot addition to the front of the house that made room to relocate the laundry room while adding a new home office and mud room.
Who did the work
Architecture by DPH Designs, Scotch Plains; general contractor, Hendershot Construction, Martinsville; countertops by Bridgewater Marble and Granite, Bound Brook; custom cabinetry by LMS Woodcraft, Akron, PA
How long it took
About 7 months, from August 2015 to February 2016
What they spent
About $185,000
Where they splurged
"The big splurge was my granite," Sharon Jochnau said. "I had to have a waterfall island."
How they saved
By selecting simple flooring tiles
What they did themselves
Sharon Jochnau selected and purchased the surface materials and fixtures.
What they like most
"The pantry and picture window are big favorites, but the waterfall island is the centerpiece that always gets compliments whenever someone new comes in my home," Sharon Jochnau said. "Cooking and entertaining are an absolute pleasure in this space."
What they’d have done differently
“My only regret is that I didn’t create a slide-out platform behind the kick plate under my stove area,” she said. “I am very short and have a difficult time reaching into my tallest pots. An extra 4 inches of height would have been ideal.”
