The kitchen started as a galley kitchen before Gary and Cindi bought the home and spent nine months renovating it for themselves and their two children, Avery and Braden. While there were many areas in the home that were changed, the kitchen received the most dramatic change.
“We really wanted to make the room larger,” Cindi says. “Because both our families live here [in El Paso], we never have just five people over, we have 35.”
During the renovations, Gary and Cindi enlisted the help of Lori McCuaig of LMC Design Group, and a personal friend of the family. Lori and Cindi decided on some radical changes within the kitchen, namely, raising the ceiling from 8 feet to 14 feet and increasing the square footage to 1,000 sq.-feet, which includes the kitchen area, a large island, an informal (although, really quite formal) dining area and a sitting area. The laundry room was also moved from one side of the room to the other, providing a much larger pantry and extra cabinets for storage.
The home décor in the room adds to the sophistication found throughout the home, most coming from Cindi’s gift and home décor business, Two Sisters, which she runs with her own sister, Susie Shinaut.
The kitchen is filled with advanced appliances, including a General Electric Profile oven, wine and regular refrigerator, an ASKO dishwasher and a Wolfe range, which Cindi selected because, “I really liked the red knobs.”
Enjoying the kitchen on a purely visual level works for Cindi, who doesn’t use it to cook. “Believe it or not, I don’t really like to cook,” says Cindi, who admits her husband does cook more than her when he has the time. “I love the kitchen, I just love to see it filled with catered food.”
The large island in the Old World meets Tuscan kitchen is covered with granite, and the large table that can seat more than 10 people sits directly before the fireplace and below a flat screen television. “We wanted to keep their original tabletop, so we had Supreme Custom Cabinets create the tabletop to fit the space. It has a great presence in the room,” Lori says. Wall-to-wall benches provide seating on two sides, and existing bar stools were re-upholstered to provide seating on the other side.
The space brings in more than a roomful of people during the holidays. It provides a place for homework, television, friends and, at times, some cooking.
“We have every holiday and birthday here with the whole family, we have friends over and we meet up in here as a family. We live in here,” Cindi says. “It is well used because it is so large. We all love this kitchen.”
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