In 1998, Nina and Terry Furstenau converted their attached garage into a family room, complete with vaulted ceiling, picture windows and cherry hard-wood floors. They liked the room from the beginning, but occasionally were frustrated by how far removed it was from the kitchen. "The room looked like an addition," Nina says. "The kids were using it, but Terry and I weren't as often."

A few years later, the couple began to discuss renovating their kitchen. Nina had always wanted a separate dining room, and she never liked the small window that looked out to the back yard. "Nina's shorter than I am," Terry laughs. "The window was too small, and she couldn't see anything."

Instead of tackling the kitchen project on their own, the pair turned to Kerry Bramon Remodeling & Design for assistance.

"Even though we had some ideas on how to create a better flow in our home, we wanted a professional builder's point of view," Nina says. "We had heard KBRD had great design service and workmanship."

Nina and Terry approached KBRD with several objectives in mind: a renovated kitchen that opened to living areas, a unified house, better use of the space that they had, and a real guest bedroom. (Nina had converted the house's study into a bedroom, but was never happy with its location by the front door.) While Nina had scanned numerous magazines for kitchen ideas, they weren't wedded to any one solution.

"We weren't sure yet what we wanted; we were open to suggestions," she says.

So Angela Holloway, KBRD's in-house designer, offered a striking option: rebuilding the kitchen in another part of the house. "It made a lot of sense once Angela suggested it," Terry says. "It really is a big change, but it works."

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