Every White Crane Remodeling Project Starts With Design
Here's the step-by-step process that ensures you’ll have a remodel you love.
See Inside: A Modern Kitchen Remodel for a St. Paul Foursquare Home
A remodel is underway. Take a look inside.
Follow along as we design and build a new kitchen within an American Foursquare in St. Paul.
Current Step
Finished Remodel
Finished Remodel
An American Foursquare Kitchen With Storage And Room For The Whole Family
Our clients bought their 1918 St. Paul home knowing they wanted to tackle a few projects, adding more of their own design sensibilities to the classic foursquare. Once the homeowners completed their basement remodel and were ready to tackle the kitchen, they looked for a partner who could handle the project in-house, from design through the end of construction.
The resulting kitchen remodel uses a modern palette to create a vibrant kitchen that provides enough storage and space for the whole family while resolving uncomfortable temperature shifts, dropped ceilings, and limited backyard views. Using the existing kitchen footprint, our design team also updated the main floor plan to include a more generous run of cabinets, a kitchen island, an enlarged opening to the dining room, and a coveted main floor bathroom.
“We were just really wanting someone with more expertise, someone to bounce ideas off of where this wasn’t their first rodeo.” – Macalester-Groveland Homeowners
“We wanted touches of walnut. In other high-touch areas, like the quartz countertops, we went with nicer selections, which we balanced out with painted surfaces elsewhere.” – Macalester-Groveland Homeowners
"They had a dream of adding a powder bathroom to the main floor but figured it would be cost and space-prohibitive to add this into the existing footprint. We were able to include the bathroom, which they were shocked would fit so seamlessly into their space."
White Crane Designer
How do you get more space without building an addition?
Configuring an ideal kitchen layout came down to finding ways to give our clients more space in their kitchen without relying on an addition. We took out the informal dining nook and two small windows to nearly double the kitchen cabinets. This also meant we could add a main floor bathroom to the home without sacrificing too much kitchen prep space.
We added an island, full-height entry cabinets, and open shelving, so our clients wouldn’t need to constantly run to the basement for their kitchen essentials. We removed a pinch point in the layout by widening the opening between the kitchen and formal dining room. Demoing existing kitchen soffits provided yet another opportunity to reclaim space in the home thanks to the newly improved ceiling heights across the kitchen.
While we lost two existing windows along the range wall, the bright daylighting from the expansive 97″x47″ window along the back of the kitchen helps the kitchen to feel more open while providing the incredible backyard views that these homeowners were after.
Some of the best things about a remodel are actually the things you can’t see.
Using space heaters in the winter and dealing with frozen pipes wasn’t exactly a fun aspect of homeownership for this St. Paul family, but it was partly why they decided to remodel. That’s why HVAC, insulation, and plumbing improvements were essential to the construction strategy.
Other unseen but necessary fixes involved the discovery of an unsupported beam that we not only fixed but also integrated into a beautiful walnut detail spanning the length of the kitchen.
And while finding asbestos at the start of construction wasn’t fun, correctly remediating it added an element of safety and value to the remodel.
“We absolutely love the huge new window to the backyard. It was on my list of ‘must-haves’ for the renovation, to let light in, to see the kids in the back, and to make up for losing the West-facing windows.” – Macalester-Groveland Homeowners
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