This home had great bones to work with. It just needed some updating to fit with these clients’ personal design styles. In the kitchen, they liked the wood look of their existing cypress cabinets but didn’t love the finish, so we decided to refinish them. We replaced the flooring, repainted, added new countertops, sink faucet, and backsplash. Their existing island had a raised bar attached to the back and was too small to accommodate the seating they wanted. We decided to remove the raised back and added a new cabinet extending the island to allow enough space for seating. To add some visual contrast, we chose a different, lighter finish for the island cabinets, but kept the same countertop as the rest of the kitchen. In the living room, there was an old, colonial-style column along with some ceiling soffits and crown molding to help visually divide the living and dining spaces. We removed the decorative column and replaced it with a wooden post. We also wrapped the soffits with wood beams. The fireplace originally had an ornate applied mantelpiece that we repainted and tiled to create a more simple and modern look. To tie it together, we chose a wooden wrap-around mantel above the fireplace. Lastly, we removed some of the existing display cabinets to the right of the fireplace and replaced it with some wood floating shelves, and added a custom wood countertop to the base cabinets below. All of the wood elements between the kitchen and living-dining space (apart from the island cabinets) have the same dark brown finish, tying all the spaces together.