Creating a vintage addition
A Bexley designer protects her home’s integrity, carefully integrating a new addition with its old surroundings.
Bexley interior designer Shauna Lehman and her husband, Mike, chose to add a kitchen addition to their vintage Cotswold Tudor home. The dwelling is part of the Bexley Home & Garden Tour on June 10 from 10 am to 5 pm.
Todd Yarrington
For several years before work began, interior designer Shauna Lehman considered the kitchen of her Cotswold Tudor home in Bexley. She and her husband, Mike, purchased the home in 2002 and have painstakingly completed a room-by-room renovation since then.
So, when it came time for the kitchen in the fall of 2010, it was clear that the tiny, rather isolated room at the rear of the century-old house would no longer work. The couple hired Renovations Unlimited and proceeded to add on a large, modernized kitchen that integrates well with the home’s vintage surroundings.
“I made it look 100 years old,” says Lehman, smiling. Expansive pine beams from her great aunt’s Hopewell barn were designed into the new kitchen’s arched ceiling, while large, wrought iron light fixtures are a dominant force over the center island. When the beams came up one short for the long centerpiece, Lehman took a pine tree from the Hopewell property and had it milled to resemble the other timber. All beams were stained in walnut to coordinate with the existing home.
“I love to cook,” says Lehman, the mother of two busy youngsters. Her designer skills were of good use, as she integrated simple Pier 1 baskets for potatoes and such into the custom cabinets done by Ron Lewis of Lewis Designs. A specially designed spice drawer allows for quick access while at the stove, while the homeowner’s eye-catching collection of blue and white English china is displayed behind glass-fronted cabinets.
Granite countertops, in a pattern called Delicatus, were installed by Marble and Granite Works and tile was done by Jan Cahill of Classico. Appliances are by General Electric, and a flat-screen television also was added, easily viewable from the comfortable table space in a bay-windowed alcove looking out over the front lawn.
Because it’s difficult for children to reach the microwave, which is stacked over the oven, Lehman added a second, smaller one in enclosed cabinets where they can prepare their own snacks and close the doors when they’re done.
Just steps away, Lehman has redesigned the home’s former kitchen, which measures about 11-by-16-feet, into a quiet and cozy sitting room. Two chairs are properly situated in front of a new hearth, providing a peaceful place for a busy, professional mom to take a break.
Sherry Beck Paprocki is the editor of Columbus Monthly Homes.
