Renovation

Catalpa Avenue Interior Renovation

Location: Chicago, IL · Type: Whole-House Interior Renovation · Status: Completed · Scope: Kitchen relocation, dining room, living room, foyer, structural modifications, lighting design

The house worked — just not very well. The kitchen sat in the middle of the floor plan, disconnected from the backyard and hemmed in by walls that chopped the interior into a series of smaller, darker rooms. The layout was functional in the way that a lot of older Chicago homes are functional: every room had a purpose, but nothing flowed.

The intervention was organizational as much as architectural. Moving the kitchen to the rear of the house — where it now opens directly to the backyard and a new deck — freed the former kitchen location to become a proper formal dining room. Structural modifications at the front of the house opened the foyer into the living room. The result is a home that feels significantly larger than it did before, not because a single square foot was added, but because it no longer feels chopped up.

The kitchen, now the most active room in the house, is also the brightest — sun-filled, connected to the outdoors, the natural center of gravity for the household. The client put it simply: the kitchen used to be a utilitarian room. Now it's where everything happens.

The lighting design tells its own story. The original plan called for recessed can lights throughout — the default choice for most renovations. We pushed for a layered approach instead: indirect cove lighting in the dining room, accent lighting in the living room, and an emphasis on maximizing natural light in the kitchen rather than supplementing it artificially. The clients were skeptical. After living in the space, they reported that the can lights — which they once kept on all day — now go largely unused. The indirect lighting in the dining room and the natural light in the kitchen are enough, and better.