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ForResidentialPros.com QR April 2014 17 FUNCTIONALITY S ome homeowners remodel to create more square footage. Some want to make better use of existing space. Some want an upgrade to dated rooms, while others just want some sort of change. For one family in Dresher, Pa., it simply was time to remodel. "We came across this remodel because the clients' son was one of our field staff," recalls Jeremy Riggall, CR, operations manager with remodeler Harth Builders, Spring House, Pa. "His parents had been thinking about doing a remodel to their whole house for a long time, but I think college tuition and other things got in the way. Now, they're just about empty nesters, and they said it was time." AN OPEN HEART "It began with a kitchen project, but as often happens, it turned into something much bigger and affected the entire first floor," Riggall recalls. The out- dated house had undergone few improvements throughout the years; it needed something new. The client spent years thinking about what she would like, so she came to the table with many ideas and products. "Our challenge was to take all of those ideas she had swirling in her mind and pull them together so they looked good," Riggall says. "We had to let some of her ideas go, we brought some of our own ideas in, and, collectively, we were able to design what you see today." The kitchen is the heart of the home and, as such, the clients wanted to open the space and enhance the functionality of the first floor. Harth Builders removed a wall, merging the dining room and kitchen. Because of this change, the back of the house, from the kitchen through the living room, is open and inviting. "They had never used their living room because it was in the front corner of their house, and life didn't happen up there," says Riggall. "Now they use it because it's close to where life happens in the kitchen and dining area." New kitchen features include seating, multicook space, easy access to the dining room and easy visibility to multimedia in the family room. "That whole back of the house—in the fam- ily room, dining room and kitch- en—is now where the family spends their time," Riggall says. CURVING ELEMENTS Curved elements play a vital role in the updated home's aesthetic. "You'll see curves everywhere," Riggall says. "We had to curve the stairway. There was a step that went down to the family room we framed as a curve, and we put in curved soffits, too." To create the custom curved soffits in the kitchen, the carpenters built the perimeters, which necessitated plotting the centers of the circle sections on the floor and charting the arcs with the given radii. Once the curved soffits were drawn on the subfloor, the carpenters laid down MDF boards and transferred the arcs to the material, where the boards then were cut to shape and replicated with a router. A single top plate was glued and screwed to the ceiling and a double bottom plate was fabricated for strength. The team repeated this process four times to create the perimeter for the two inner and two outer soffit edges. The inner and outer soffits were studded with 12- and Long-overdue remodel opens space, enhances home life for empty nesters Finally , Before the remodel, the kitchen was a cramped, uninviting space. Opening the walls around connected it to the living area to create a functional, large space. Before QUR_16-19_DesignSol414.indd 17 3/28/14 10:11 AM