When Jim Marshall and Eric Ayaso purchased their 5,000-square-foot midcentury Mount Helix home in 2012 the motivation was to enjoy more space than their tight Bankers Hill home provided for themselves and their menagerie of three large dogs and four cats. They got it, but it was still less than paradise. The big problem centered around their kitchen. It was large but the layout was so ill-conceived that there was no circulation.
“There weren’t even 36 inches between the refrigerator and the cabinets,” said Marshall. “We could barely fully open the refrigerator door.”
Large soffits made the space feel claustrophobic and while there was a skylight, it wasn’t sufficient for the space. Additionally, the door leading to the yard’s breezeway went through the laundry room adjacent to the kitchen, which never appealed to Marshall or Ayaso, who are big on entertaining. For them, guests and laundry, storage barrels of dog and cat food, and the stuff of daily living just don’t mix.
The couple was finally ready to dive into a renovation by 2017 and Marshall took on the project, driven, he said, by a desire to save money.
“I literally thought, ‘I wish there was a cheap way to redo the kitchen,’ so I used that as an Internet search and found Refind Kitchens,” he said.
David Berens and his mother, Juliann, launched Refind Kitchens in June 2016. Essentially a sustainable social enterprise, the duo finds used or showroom kitchen cabinets, sinks, countertops, bathroom vanities and other kitchen and bath materials, deconstructs them from their source, spruces them up if necessary, and then resells them to homeowners. Juliann Berens, an interior designer with National Council for Interior Design Qualification (NCIDQ), who owned her own green design firm in Tucson after years of working as a nurse, offers design services to help buyers reconfigure the materials and create stunning, -friendly spaces. With a showroom in the Miramar area, they also offer construction plans and drawings and project management.
Once Marshall understood the environmental benefits of this approach, the idea of working with them was even more appealing.
“It feels like a right thing to do,” he said.
Plus, the couple could maximize their budget with upscale fixtures that might otherwise have been out of reach.
First, though, Juliann Berens needed to learn their style. So, the couple individually perused photos from the Houzz website, narrowing them down to the point where they each ended up picking the same inspiration photo, which happily also was close to the shape of the kitchen. Berens also sent them photos of cabinets Refind was deconstructing.
Ultimately, Marshall and Ayaso decided to expand the project beyond the kitchen to address related issues, like that laundry room access. In the end, the renovation included the kitchen, adjacent bar, the laundry room and powder room for a total of 2,400 square feet. The idea was to design an interior with period materials that would pay homage to the home’s midcentury-modern exterior architecture.
The contract was signed in December 2018, with the goal of having the renovation completed in time for the couple’s large annual June party. And they just made that goal with a four-month construction process that followed intense programming because the footprint had to be adjusted. The wall between the kitchen and dining room was moved 18 inches and the doorways enlarged. The outdoor access moved from the laundry room, where they created a wall with a window, to the kitchen, where the original sink had been under a window. The cooking triangle was adjusted to make more sense, with the sink moving to the island, across from the new range. The soffits were removed to open up the sightlines. And even though the island is now twice as big as it had been, Juliann Berens created much more room and both expanded and reshaped the skylight above, as well as added another skylight over the bar.
The kitchen design centered around cherry cabinets Refind Kitchens recycled from a Cardiff home. It even came with a Bosch microwave/oven combination. Instead of the $40,000 retail for the cabinets and $3,500 for the microwave/oven, the total cost was $15,875.
“They were about 10 years old, well-maintained, and a really beautiful cherry wood,” said David Berens. “They were modular, so it was easy to take them apart and reconfigure them.”
“It’s like playing Tetris,” Juliann Berens said.
“It’s like playing with Legos,” David Berens countered.
The savings meant the budget could be diverted to other things. The DCS Range that anchors the back wall would have cost $10,000 but it came from a Carlsbad remodel and cost the men $3,000. Three large circular Vellum lights that were split between the dining room and breakfast nook ran $1,800 each instead of $14,400. They also had custom pendants made from recycled glass to hang over the new island. And, as in the Houzz inspiration photo, they bought high-gloss white acrylic upper cabinets. The spaces are tied together with new oak floors.
Then there was the island. Now 120 inches long with lots of storage and two dishwashers, it’s topped by a waterfall of engineered quartz in a pattern reminiscent of terrazzo. The quartz was also used for the countertops in the kitchen, bar, and breakfast nook. But Juliann Berens added an extra detail to the island: a thin, continuous 10-foot strip of cherry wood along its seating edge.
The backsplash proved to be the most challenging. “We wanted a depth of shape, color and glaze,” said Juliann Berens. “The idea was a 3-D update on an historically correct design.”
It was hit and miss until they finally identified ocean blue bow-tie-shaped 3-D tiles for the kitchen, and, adjacent behind the bar, tiles in the same color but their mirror shape — diamonds. The pendants, with their grayish hue, play well both lit and unlit against the ceiling and the backsplash.
And, of course, there’s the renovated powder room with a long, reused vanity, backed by a patterned blue concrete tile backsplash and eye-popping Sputnik light fixtures.
Altogether, David Berens estimates the couple saved more than $72,000 by choosing repurposed fixtures and that more than 4,000 pounds of material were diverted from landfills. It all went so well that the couple is planning to work with Refind Kitchens on the other side of the house.
“Our new kitchen is a work of art,” said Marshall. “We waited years to launch this project, and I couldn’t be happier with both the outcome and the process.”
Golden is a San Diego freelance writer.
