My house was on the cover of a magazine! It was such an honor and surprise to see my kitchen on the Fall Anniversary issue cover of Design KC. Well, my house I moved out of last summer ;). The editor of Design KC, Andrea Darr, was one of my very first interviews when we opened Golden & Pine six and a half years ago and we've stayed in touch over the years. So it was a lovely full circle after years of contact to have them shoot this home...about three weeks before we moved out for good!
We purchased this house in early 2019, off the market, after our friends who lived behind this house mentioned the owners were planning to sell. They had raised their family in this home for over thirty years and were moving out of state to be closer to their now grown kids. The Prairie Village lot was just under an acre, which is pretty rare in Prairie Village, and full of big tall beautiful trees. The homeowners knew it needed some updating, but were very hopeful it would not be torn down for a great big new build. My husband loved the big yard, and I fell in love with the in ground pool (a lifelong dream of mine!).
We worked with 3Square Contracting to take this house from early 1900's colonial to what I coined our Modern Colonial house. We took out a ton of walls in the first floor to get an open living/kitchen/dining space, added a mudroom and newly located powder room, built a massive back deck, redid every bathroom and basically took every section down to the studs and put it back together. I've been holding back on sharing before and afters until the magazine feature was live, but now I get to share it all! Up first, the exterior.
I am a huge fan of dark houses. My first house was painted navy, and I fell in love with the way the landscape pops against the dark color. I also love the way painting a house all one color for brick, shingles, trim instantly modernizes it. While the colonial exterior was charming, I knew black would make it my own. We ended up going with Black Panther by Benjamin Moore for the house, which I will forever remember because then and now I have two little super hero loving boys.
We couldn't squeeze the deck into the scope in the first round, but about a year after living there we took out the smallish white deck that had seen it's day and added a super large modern deck that spanned the whole back of our house. My biggest goals were to add an outdoor living and dining room on the deck, and to remove any visual barriers between the pool and the house. We used wire deck rails so that you could see straight through them. We also forgot to ever have the backyard photographed (!) so excuse my slightly blurry iphone pictures here.
We also changed out the pool liner from a bright aqua to a moodier blue, which we loved.
Like to see the before and after comparisions? Scroll on down!
Over the next month or so, I'm going to be sharing some before and afters of almost the whole house. Check in weekly or watch our instagram and emails for links.
