Kitchen fix-up gets couple cooking with home makeover

 Take a tour

Craig and Teri Leonard's kitchen was so small that they could hardly stand, let alone cook, there together.

So the couple created a larger, more user-friendly space by combining it with two other small rooms. To further open up the kitchen, the Leonards removed the upper cabinets.

They don't miss them. "I couldn't reach them," said Teri Leonard, who is 5 feet tall.

The kitchen redo was just part of a six-month renovating and redecorating project that the couple recently completed at the home, which they bought 2 1/2 years ago. Built in 1925 in the F.Q. Story Historic District in downtown Phoenix, the home had 1,150 square feet. After $200,000 in improvements, it sports 1,650 square feet.

At first, the Leonards intended only to fix up the kitchen and remodel the existing bathroom.

But as work progressed, they added projects: a master-bathroom addition, converting the back patio into a family room, installing decorative details, such as crown molding, and redecorating with a contemporary bent.

The kitchen has a loft-style appeal with its custom espresso-colored lower cabinets, stainless-steel appliances and white, black and gray granite countertops that have streaks of cranberry running through them.

There's a convenient pot filler at the Viking professional-style cooktop, where Craig Leonard enjoys cooking Italian or Mexican food, "anything where I don't have to measure," he said. Because Teri Leonard likes to bake, she works at the other end of the kitchen, near the wall ovens.

Stainless-steel shelves, one with a metallic strip that holds knives, lend a decorative feel along with red pots and accents, and a collection of Hawaiian masks made of lava.

In the adjacent dining room, a stunning chandelier, whose crystals are suspended from a chrome rod, lights up the space, which features a black walnut table and contemporary chairs with white leather seats. A wine-colored wall and contemporary artwork by German artist Victor Klauss completes the look.

Interior designer Carol Mickey, of Carol Mickey Designs Inc. in Chandler, carried the rich red-wine color into the living room, which is inviting and cozy yet contemporary in feel with a tufted shiny red sectional. Mickey chose the red, and the rich plums also found throughout the house, from the colors found in the couple's extensive contemporary art collection, she said.

"You can see, with all the wonderful colors in their artwork, all the fun I had," Mickey said, pointing to a Toos van Holstein painting of a Venetian canal on the living-room wall.

The paint colors, materials and textures throughout the house make the rooms pop.

The redone living-room fireplace was refaced in quartzite; the new hearth and mantel are made of sunset-red onyx. Black glass, instead of a grate and logs, lines the interior; when turned on, flames sparkle through the glass.

The addition's master bathroom rivals that of any resort.

A stainless-steel vessel sink adorns the curved vanity, which is made of birch and follows the lines of built-in cabinets that line the wall. The doorless shower features Kohler's Water Tiles, a showerhead/body-spray system.

"Our plumber calls it the carwash," Craig Leonard said, laughing.

Decorative tile, in rich shades of plum, lines the floor, walls and shower. Even the closet door is decorative: It is lined in rain glass, a translucent glass that is heavily textured.

With a new closet in the master bath, the Leonards removed the one that had been in the master bedroom, which had taken up a third of the space. They also redecorated the hall bath.

Additional plans include finishing the family room and redoing the backyard landscaping.

Reach the reporter at sue.doerfler@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8236.

The newly redone kitchen is more user-friendly and larger than the previous one. Three rooms were combined to create the new kitchen space.