Interior Designer Fixes 4 People’s Kitchens

The triangle is what you create

whenever you design a kitchen.

We're creating that triangle

between the sink to the stove to the fridge.

Love the triangle.

I'm Darren Jett.

I'm an interior designer based in New York

and I'm here to help everyone out today with their kitchens.

This is Re:Design.

Here we have Kathy.

This is the kitchen that she submitted to us.

She's telling us it's a 1907 lake house in Vermont.

You can clearly tell that this kitchen gets a lot of love

and I mean that in the best way possible.

This looks like a really great place

to spend time with family.

So Kathy mentioned that she wanted to maybe redo the floors

and redo the ceilings.

If Kathy wanted to remove the ceiling up here,

I bet you money that there is a joist system above.

This looks to be a seventies era ceiling really

because you can tell when the appliances are put in,

you can tell when the floor was put in.

First and foremost, let's rip up this linoleum floor.

I bet you there's hardwood floor underneath.

If everything goes well, I'm sure there is.

You can look in the living room that's adjacent right here

and see the hardwood floor.

I bet you it runs this way as well.

And you know, it looks like it's a beautiful, old,

maybe it's like a farmhouse type of sink.

So let's try to keep it if we can.

Oftentimes, farmhouse sinks

will have a sort of dropped front.

Usually they're made of a nice porcelain or ceramic.

And I'm just gonna start adding some cabinets for her.

We have a dishwasher here,

and what we're doing here

by moving the fridge to this location

is we're creating that triangle that everyone loves to have.

The triangle is what you create

whenever you design a kitchen.

It's really that zone

from going between the sink to the stove to the fridge.

If you think about, you know,

you get your groceries out of the fridge,

you go to the sink to wash your veggies,

you start to prep next to that.

So that is really that zone, one, two, three.

I really love how Kathy has this place here

to have breakfast.

Also, maybe it's a place where people hang out

whenever she or someone is cooking in the kitchen.

I would like to maybe kind of give that

its own place in the kitchen.

So maybe over here we can kind of build

a sort of built-in banquette situation.

A banquette is a built-in bench,

so I actually sort of like these charming

sort of American country chairs.

These ones that are painted are actually really cool,

so I'd love to incorporate that style in this kitchen

and just keep the essence of Kathy in this new remodel.

So we moved the fridge over here on this wall

and then we added pantry space right here.

We did that because she has these incredible windows

and views that go outside.

And then the cabinets we should do

in more of a shaker style.

Instead of it being a flat panel like this,

what it has is a sort of raised border.

Usually it's about two and a quarter inches on all sides,

but it has a little bit of that like kind of raised profile.

And then you can put beautiful hardware on top.

I love something from a company like deVOL

which does really incredible hand-forged hardware.

Maybe it's in brass, something that gets a patina over time.

So these are some initial thoughts for Kathy.

We love Kathy, and I really hope

that Kathy invites me over for her next barbecue.

So this is Tyrice.

So he moved into this apartment.

It's a very New York building.

The kitchen is clearly open to the rest of the space

that you can see in these photos here.

He doesn't have a dining area right now,

so we're gonna help him out with that.

What we need to do is to take advantage

of all the space right here.

I think let's give him a butcher block style countertop

and maybe we do something

that's more of a natural stone material.

So if we can just start to imagine

what a table would look like,

it would look something sort of like this.

Again, extra countertop space.

And also when friends come over to have a drink,

they can sit here

while he's making a drink over by the sink.

So luckily for Tyrice, he already has the triangle going on.

I think this apartment was designed pretty well,

except for the lack of an island.

But you can start to see here,

you have the fridge to the sink

kind of over here to the stove

and then back to the fridge.

There is an island here sort of table.

I can plop myself down,

talk to Tyrice as he's making me a cocktail

and then I think that we're gonna have a good night.

And that's our advice for Tyrice on how to make his kitchen

into more of an entertaining space.

Priscilla, Priscilla, Priscilla.

She's coming to us from L.A.,

and she is wanting to redo her kitchen

to make it have a bit more personality.

She loves vintage.

She told us that she loves sort of eclectic finds

and the eclectic furniture.

We don't wanna change the layout too much for Priscilla.

It's really working pretty well.

Priscilla has the triangle, which is fantastic.

She has the sink right here.

Again, it goes from fridge to sink

and then from sink to stove.

And that's your golden triangle.

The first thing I notice is that it's all white.

When I look at Priscilla,

I can tell that she's not an all white loving person.

I think that she really wants some color.

Imagine if the cabinets

were all this kind of like 1950s soda shop blue.

Would be so, so, so cool

and also like, you know,

the cheapest thing that she could possibly do.

I'd love to give her some color.

And then I want to have her

just update all of this hardware

into something that's a bit more fun

and a bit more of that retro look.

I would do retro-inspired hardware.

A lot of times when you walk into homes built in the 1950s,

you know, a lot of these kind of L.A. bungalows,

when you walk into an original kitchen,

you'll see the hardware that has this kind of cup shape.

So get, you know, some relatively affordable hardware,

sort of cup shape that's very retro in style

and do it in a chrome finish

that matches all the other retro finishes in the kitchen.

Her faucet over here is actually pretty cool.

I like how it has that sort of bridge handle

that comes out from the wall.

Again, very, very retro.

And how do we soften the space, okay?

Easily what we can do is talk about the rug

and talk about the window treatments.

This tiny little rug right here.

Let's give her a runner that goes all the way through, okay?

Something soft underfoot.

A wool rug is great for a kitchen. Super durable.

If you spill something, it's a natural fiber.

It's easy to get up.

Okay, let's talk about window treatments.

She clearly has like pretty high ceilings,

so I would love to give her something

that makes those ceilings feel higher.

If we do something

like a very simple soft Roman shade above the window,

what that would do is it would make that space

feel much, much, much higher.

Priscilla, I'm trying to give you something

that is very cool, very retro.

I think the kitchen that we're giving you

will bring your personality into the space.

So this is Sallye.

She's retired and she's looking to update her kitchen.

There's a lot of brown.

This really needs more contrast.

I would say that right now

the cabinets are matching the floor way too much.

And it's also that very late nineties, very yellow wood.

I really loathe whenever floors are broken up in one room.

It doesn't make any sense from a flow perspective.

And Sallye's house has this little area

right in front of the stove

and right in front of the sink where it looks to be tile.

I would say, look, let's do this whole thing in the wood.

Let's eliminate that completely.

An easy solution is to stain the floor.

I would suggest, again,

always thinking about the nature of the house,

the character of the house.

What I'd like to do is to make the floors

more like the door and the door frame.

So I'd like to replace

all the appliances for Sallye as well.

This fridge right here, panelize it, easy.

This sink right here feels very dated.

It has the two basins. It doesn't make any sense.

Have something that is much more of a one basin, big sink.

It's much more user-friendly. It looks better.

So just take that out and let's do a stain on the wood

that's maybe not quite so yellow.

Maybe it picks up on some of the darker finishes

of the door over here

and really is more intrinsic with, you know,

the craftsman style of this house.

I'll say that the architecture of the kitchen

is actually really nice.

I love this kind of picture window right above the sink.

I think that's very cool.

Sallye also told us

that her home is really inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright,

the Frank Lloyd Wright style that she's mentioned

the house already has.

You can see here the prairie window

right there above the sink.

Have everything be very in tune with nature.

Let's pull the outside in.

Let's really emphasize these beautiful windows,

the stained glass over here

and really more of like a natural color.

I would keep this as an inset cooktop.

I wouldn't put in a hood because she has this view.

Sallye, I think you already have such a wonderful kitchen

and I think all of these updates

will just make your life better, easier

and just have a more beautiful space.

So some of the common issues that we saw today,

really it's a lot of outdated appliances.

It's a lot of things

that don't really make sense with the house

and it's a lot of things that are just kind of bland.

And how can we update those things

while keeping the personality in thought?

Your kitchen is the first thing to date,

so it really should be something that is part of the house.

But there are ways that you can inject your personality

through things like color, hardware,

rugs on the floor, curtains over the windows.

So that's my kitchen advice.