Kitchen · Loch Lloyd, MO

An Arabesque Backsplash, and a Kitchen That Finally Fit the House

The kitchen wasn't badly built. It just wasn't built for how this family actually cooks, gathers, and moves through a Saturday morning.

A Kitchen Facing the Wrong Way

The original layout put the range against an interior wall, facing a run of upper cabinets with almost no sightline to the rest of the main floor. It worked fine for a house built to a standard floor plan. It just didn't work for a family that wanted to be in the room together instead of facing a backsplash while everyone else sat behind them.

Opening a sightline doesn’t always mean moving a wall. What sits at eye level, where the cabinetry stops, and how the room gets lit all decide whether a kitchen reads as part of the main floor or as a separate room off it. Those are finish decisions, and they can be made inside a footprint that isn’t changing.

The scope was a Full Remodel: new cabinetry, new countertops, new lighting, all within the existing footprint. Nothing structural moved. What changed was every finish and fixture in the room, chosen to open the sightlines the old layout had closed off.

The island is where the change is easiest to see. It runs the length of the room with the sink set into it, so whoever is working at it faces out across the floor rather than into a wall of uppers. The range sits on the perimeter under the arabesque, which keeps the cooking wall as the thing you look at instead of the thing you turn your back on.

Choosing the Loudest Material First

The arabesque tile backsplash was the first material decision, and everything else followed from it. The cabinet tone, the countertop veining, even the pendant lighting were chosen to sit quietly next to a backsplash already doing enough work on its own.

That order is the reverse of how most kitchens get specified. Cabinets and counters usually get settled early and the tile gets picked last from whatever still works alongside them. Starting at the other end only makes sense when one material is going to dominate the room, and an arabesque pattern across a full wall is going to dominate the room. Once it was chosen, everything after it had something to answer to.

The Bar Nook Off the Kitchen

The same project has a built-in bar set into an alcove off the kitchen. Dark glazed tile runs from the counter up past two walnut floating shelves, with a small sink, a wine refrigerator under the counter, and cabinetry in the same grey wash as the island rather than the white of the perimeter run. That’s the tell that it was drawn alongside the kitchen instead of added to the plan afterward.

If your kitchen has that same problem, not broken but facing the wrong way, it's one of the first things we look for when we walk it with you.

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