“Why do I want walls?” Steven asked. “Well, for one, it would be nice to have somewhere to hang some pictures up.” The Milton homeowner laughed. “We have two kids, three dogs, and everyone plays sports. That’s a lot of pictures!”
“You know what else would be nice,” Steven’s wife Jan added. “A little bit of privacy. So when I’m trying to cook dinner, I’m not also trying to oversee home work or referee whatever Minecraft drama the kids are wound up about.”
With the many new experiences of 2020 now behind us, local homeowners are considering home improvement projects in a new way. Kitchen upgrades continue to top the list of most popular renovation projects, but the new 2021 twist is: Is it time to give up the open floor plan?
As kitchen contractors near Milton, we’re seeing people move out of their open floor plan phase with renovations that introduce more wall space and storage into the home. This can be as simple as walling off the kitchen, sometimes including a pass through window to maintain some of the open feel, or adding popular features like a butler’s kitchen or pantry.
“Adding walls to our floor plan allows us to do things with color that we weren’t able to do before,” Steven added. “Our kitchen designers really helped us understand that even though the kitchen was now more private, it still contributed to the overall look and feel of the home. From a design perspective, this gave us a lot more flexibility. Before, everything was very neutral because it all had to work together. Now the kitchen’s very red and yellow and upbeat – I love being in there, it’s high energy and fun now. In an open floor plan, this would be awful. But now, with the upgrades we’ve made, it really works. I feel like our kitchen was able to come to life.”
“Your home is for you,” Jan said. “When we bought our home, we worried about what was the trend, and how would this change or that change impact the resale value of our home. But now we’ve spent a year living in our home – really being here, in this space – and it makes me understand that the changes we make are first and foremost to make our lives better.”