Gerard Mercator is a name you might not be able to recall from Middle School Social Studies, but he is the 16th Century Flemish mathematician and cartographer who famously figured out how to display a 3-dimensional world on a 2-dimensional map – the Mercator Projection. Mercator himself was somewhat of a rags-to-almost-riches story (it wasn’t easy to become rich making maps) and was considered the Prince of Cartographers in his own day even though he never traveled on a ship.

As Mercator gained some success at his trade, he was finally able to contemplate building a house for his growing family, and here his story is a lot like many of ours: budget for the necessities and plan for the future. He contracted for the design and construction of a ‘comfortable and grand dwelling suitable for an honest citizen of modest fortune.’

His was not an unlimited fortune, though, so the minimum requirements were set as ‘the essentials for maintaining the household…such as a kitchen, a store for food, bedrooms, cisterns…’ Mercator had reason to hope that his fortune would continue to grow, so he laid in provision for ‘entertaining, the amenities of life, ornament, and magnificence such as porticos, halls, courts, dining rooms, a third floor, pleasure gardens, and orchards could be added as time passes and opportunity and convenience arise.’ We can assume that ‘opportunity and convenience’ meant more money!

Mercator was planning ahead, and contracted that the ‘plan of the whole work be drawn up at first.’ We call this a Master Plan, and Designed for Downtown understands that budgets are today what they were in Mercator’s day – rarely able to absorb the whole picture in one view. But it is still important to plan for the future and to leave room for additions and improvements to accommodate ‘the amenities of life’ as ‘opportunity and convenience’ allow. Give Design for Downtown a call to start planning the present essentials and the future additions now for your home renovation or custom home.

My parents had a custom home built for our family back in the early 1960s (I was very, very young). The house had the latest modern conveniences, especially in the kitchen. One of those conveniences was a pantry with a two-level lazy Susan to conveniently present whatever my mom was looking for with a simple spin of the wheel (sometimes it presented me, if I was playing on the lazy Susan at the time. We younger kids thought this was fascinating - no more going down to the cellar for the flour or sugar.

It all seems so primitive now, though, as the pantry has become 'a kitchen within.’ The Pantry is a room of its own, sometimes even expanded into a Scullery Kitchen as today's kitchens are approaching truly gourmet level. For most folks today, the pantry is an overflow area to the kitchen, and is designed to look and to serve as not merely a storage area, but a mini-kitchen in itself.

If the pantry is still a cabinet, it is a bank of cabinets with roll-out shelves to make reaching the stuff in the back much easier. Sometimes it doubles as an appliance garage, with the microwave oven, toaster, blender, and mixer in place, plugged in, and ready to use. But if space allows, the pantry becomes its own domain, with open shelves, coffee bar, microwave station, and loads and loads of storage. A second sink, and even a second dishwasher, takes the load off the main kitchen.

Sometimes we announce the pantry with a frosted glass door, other times we hide it completely with faux cabinet doors - but it's there, and it has taken on an outsized importance in the modern kitchen, the 'kitchen within.’

We at Designed for Downtown, LLC strive to incorporate the latest labor-saving and user-friendly features in our renovation and custom home designs, including the most beautiful as well as most functional pantries.

Give us a call today to start the conversation about how to make your kitchen work better by adding a 'kitchen within.'

In our last blog post, we spoke of the home renovation process as a metamorphosis, the transformation of the tired caterpillar into the beautiful butterfly. To carry that analogy a little further, if you look closely at the butterfly you can still see the former caterpillar. In a similar way, we at AJH Renovations, LLC and Designed for Downtown, LLC will design the renovation of a mature home so that the shadows of the former house remain, only beautified and accented. This process is called reclamation, and it’s both a lot of fun and a lot of work.

Due to the conditions of construction fifty or more years ago, and the rigors of the modern International Building Code, we are not often able to reuse existing materials in the same use for the renovation. Hardwood flooring may have been refinished one too many times to allow it to be reused as flooring, original windows are usually single-pane and no longer meet energy standards, lighting fixtures were installed before UL ratings and are probably no longer safe enough for reuse for the same purpose. But all is not lost, and these original materials need not be sent to the landfill.

Early 20 th Century single-pane windows can be repurposed as accent cabinetry doors for a wet bar or utility zone; attic plank flooring becomes wainscot for the new second-story living space, and old wall paneling is incorporated into the custom cabinetry design as door and drawer panels. Old beams in an out-building become new mantels, and even an unused old washstand can be converted into a single-sink vanity. A new renovation, and a house full of memories at the same time.

We at Designed for Downtown, LLC and AJH Renovations, LLC frankly love old homes and, while we understand that times change and houses need to keep up with the latest technology, safety features, and styles, we still want to be able to see that caterpillar almost hidden, but not quite, by the beautiful butterfly. Give us a call today to start the conversation of mixing the old with the new in your home’s future life.

A whole-house renovation is very much a metamorphosis – a ‘change of form’ not unlike the dramatic change of a caterpillar to a butterfly. We don’t get to see the amazing transformation of the caterpillar to the butterfly because it’s all done inside a cocoon. It might be a good idea, though few would be willing to pay for it, to wrap the entire renovation site in a similar cocoon, because the renovation process is probably as ugly as the metamorphosis of the insect. Some of our renovations over the years have been so dramatic that the homeowners have admitted to low-grade depression and even tears after the demolition phase. Alas, for the cocoon. I guess the adage, “you have to crack some eggs to make an omelet” applies.

It’s not always that bad. At AJH Renovations, LLC and our sister design studio, Designed for Downtown, LLC, we do try to preserve as much of the old house look as we can. Sometimes, when the renovation is mostly inside, the shell of the house acts like that cocoon, hiding the transformation until complete (of course, you have to get invited in to see the butterfly). But, frankly, some houses are just too run down or, to be honest, ugly. When that is the case, metamorphosis is the solution. Sometimes the only indication that the butterfly used to be the caterpillar is the house number! It’s an exciting process, giving a new lease on life to an old home or, as our tag line says, “Turning a 20th Century House into a 21st Century Home.”

At AJH Renovations, LLC we know that the process is not pretty, and that there will be times when all seems lost and hopeless. But the design is there, the drawings are done and the material & finishes selected. Soon the butterfly will emerge and the metamorphosis will be complete! Give us a call today at AJH Renovations, LLC and let us help you with your ugly caterpillar.