ecomodern design

Description of Work: Modern Kitchen Remodel

Description of Work: Henry Gutman at Ecomodern was a terrific partner in designing the renovation of our house. We started out with a couple basic ideas to bring our ca 1930s original kitchen and a poorly-designed 1950s room addition into a functional and attractive remodel. Having thought about it for years we had pretty-well formulated goals about what we wanted to accomplish. Henry's preliminary drawings showed he had been very attentive to our assessment of what we needed and he was the one guy we interviewed who had fresh approaches to implementing our ideas. He was good at facilitating our discussion, taking input from all of us, including our 23-yr-old engineering-student son. Together we hammered out our plans. Henry's team (including specialists for the engineering and drafting of our proposal) was helpful in obtaining permits on a reasonable schedule. His continued consultation and ready accessibility gave me confidence to pursue the project as an owner-builder, saving the costs of employing a general contractor. With the flexibility to accommodate changes required by my scavenging materials, especially windows from Craig's List, Henry was instrumental in maintaining our budget requirements. Yes, it cost more and took longer than we initially envisioned, but we pretty much stuck with our financial constraints and achieved much more in the transformation of our house than we could have imagined. There is a sense of space and relationships between inside and outside which has produced a truly thrilling result. A common two-bedroom one bath with an "extra" room off the kitchen has become a stunning three and two with the addition of a gallery/commons area which affords sight lines through the entire length of the building. With only approximately 300 sq. ft. of additional space inventively utilized we really feel that we are in a completely new and different house.