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Cara Silver and Steve Wagman weren’t thinking about remodeling their Palo Alto Eichler until they started batting around hypothetical ideas on what they would change about the home with friends in their den.
“Steve asked, ‘What would you do here?’” said their architect friend Helena Barrios Vincent.
What Vincent suggested was opening up their galley-like kitchen to the den, which featured wall-to-ceiling glass doors distinctive of developer Joseph Eichler’s “California Modern” style. Oh, and taking down one wall next to the family room.
It wasn’t long before the Wagmans got to work remodeling their home in Palo Alto’s Midtown neighborhood.
The result? A light and airy living space, beginning with the family room/kitchen that allows a view right through the kitchen to the den and backyard.
All this was accomplished during the Pandemic in 2021.
“We were looking for a project, a way to modernize the house,” Silver said, but to keep costs down by staying within the house’s footprint. No exterior walls were impacted.
Wall removed, appliances relocated
Today, Caesarstone Pebble Stone Grey quartz tops the extended island/peninsula, which houses the new Bosch gas cooktop. The extension allows for four high chairs and dining-room storage along one side.
“During Covid it was difficult to get appliances,” Cara said. Another challenge was finding appliances that fit the European dimensions of their IKEA Ringhult high-gloss white cabinets.
Midtown Eichler | Embarcadero Media | designed by Linda Taaffe“We wanted flat cabinets with no moldings to fit with the Eichler simplicity,” she said, choosing high gloss so it wouldn’t read as a typical white kitchen.
“We love to entertain, but we could barely host Thanksgiving” with the old oven. The new Samsung oven “is a big improvement for us,” she added.
So was moving the location of the refrigerator, staggering the opposing oven so the doors no longer compete for space.
They upgraded their shiny white cabinets with higher-end black pulls.
“We didn’t do a lot of reconfiguration that was expensive,” Silver said. “We did a practical reconfiguration, not an overhaul.”
Since their engineered flooring in natural maple had been discontinued, they were lucky to have nearly enough remnants in their garage to fill in where there had once been walls. They kept the original Eichler large glass-ball lighting, but added a new midcentury modern fixture in the dining area. They also added LED track lighting, what Silver called “airplane lighting,” under the upper cabinets.
One compromise: Although Wagman would have liked to have added a hood over the cooktop, Silver really loved the idea of viewing the backyard from the family room (through the kitchen). They were able to find a heavy-duty kitchen exhaust fan that’s attached to the ceiling.
During the six weeks of construction, the family turned one bedroom into a “kitchen,” while cordoning off the mess.
Asked if they should have done anything differently, Silver said she “kind of wishes she had a bit more storage” now that her two adult children (and a second dog) have temporarily moved back in. But that would have involved punching out an exterior wall to make the pantry deeper – deemed not worth it for a short-term issue.
The duo said they were pretty happy with upgrades previous owners had made, before they moved into the home, in 2006. That included additions and raising the roof in the atrium/entry hall area. “We were just expanding on that, making it lighter and brighter,” she said.
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