Bigger isn’t necessarily better.
It’s a concept interior designer Peg Cox has embraced throughout her career.
“It’s so America. Bigger, bigger, bigger,” she said. “As a designer, I always see people who are doing these things. They want more. I always try to get them to analyze: ‘What do you really need?’ There are so many ways to accomplish your goals with good planning, therefore saving time, money and resources.”
When it came time, however, for Cox and her husband, Jeff, to plan their own remodeling project, they immediately thought of building a two-story addition onto their 2,000-square-foot rural Snohomish farmhouse.
It would be the ideal way, they thought, to remodel their dreary kitchen while adding a full-size master bedroom and a sitting room with a fireplace.
Within that same year, however, the couple realized their son, Ian, 18, would be going off to college soon with their daughter, Taylor, 14, following not long after. Both the Coxes were approaching 50 years old.
“Luckily, we came to our senses,” Peg Cox said. “I always like the idea of paring down. We thought, ‘It just doesn’t make sense to be adding all this square footage.’ You’re just adding property tax.”
The Coxes instead reevaluated their needs and decided to reorganize and remodel within the same footprint.
They opened up their kitchen to the dining room by taking out a wall, revealing a once-blocked panorama of the Cascades and the valley below.
They converted the laundry room just off the kitchen into a hallway office. They reinstalled their old kitchen cabinets into their mudroom, which was raised to match the level of the house, to create an expansive laundry room with plenty of extra storage.
Finally, and, perhaps, most important, they enclosed 36 square feet of their existing covered porch to create a small sunny sitting area right next to the kitchen.
“I get a view of Pilchuck right here,” Jeff Cox said of his preferred newspaper-reading nook, made cozy with a comfortable leather chair and a clear view of a local mountain icon. “This is truly one of my favorite places in the house.”
It’s also created another conversation space, in addition to the two stools placed at the new granite bar in the kitchen.
“It’s so much more efficient,” Peg Cox said of their use of space. “I have a huge laundry room and an office all within the same square footage. The kitchen is wonderful.”
The Cox project wasn’t all about improving space efficiency, however. The Coxes were equally focused on matching — and, in some cases, improving upon — the quaint character of their farmhouse, built in about 1917.
They asked contractors to duplicate the heavy baseboards and thick millwork surrounding windows and doors. Though they chose granite for their primary countertop surface, they balanced the modern look with distressed wood slabs in the kitchen and on the desk in the office.
When it came time to finish their new Shaker-style cabinets, Peg Cox hired a local professional to paint them with brushes, rather than the more typical spray painting offered on site or at the factory.
“You can see the strokes in it,” Peg Cox said of the old-school look. “It’s hand-brushed.”
Fixtures and door pulls throughout the kitchen carry a Tuscan brass finish, a so-called living finish that will naturally discolor or develop a patina with regular wear.
Thanks to the removal of that major kitchen wall, light pours naturally into the entire kitchen, where the Coxes rearranged their appliances and enclosed junk-drawer and modern appliance areas with the clean lines of cabinets.
The Coxes sacrificed a few of their desires by not adding on to their home. Peg Cox still wants a fireplace, though that will likely come with a remodeling of their family room sometime down the road.
They’re also still sharing a 10-foot-by-12-foot bedroom upstairs with low ceilings and a tiny closet, instead of the master they had dreamed of creating.
Their decisions, however, have brought about new ways of thinking, Jeff Cox said, adding that having only small unheated bedrooms upstairs keeps the family together.
Though Ian is now off at college in Rhode Island, Taylor spends most of her time downstairs in the new living spaces, especially with the family’s computer right off the kitchen.
“It’s really nice because it’s not cut off,” Taylor said of the new office and computer area, which she loves in addition to the new kitchen where she often cooks. “It’s so much better.”
Square footage and space constraints are relative, said Peg Cox, who still remembers their last home, an 800-square-foot space in San Anselmo, Calif., where they lived before moving here in 1990.
Over the years, their farmhouse has evolved, including a new elegant side entryway Peg Cox designed as part of their recent remodel.
“To me it’s a member of the family,” she said. “It’s changed as we’ve changed.”
Reporter Sarah Jackson: 425-339-3037 or sjackson@heraldnet.com
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
