Completed client project. The owners came to us with a busy kitchen in their 1977 home in Novato, about 3,727 square feet, with vaulted wood-truss ceilings and an open kitchen and living room. The children came through the cooking area for snacks and moved between the kitchen, living room and terrace with the dog. The family wanted the kitchen to support that everyday traffic, let the cook keep sight of the children, and feel calmer to use without losing the hillside views or the house’s marble, tile and wood finishes. The house’s primary suite and its marble bathroom also shaped how we thought about keeping the finishes connected. The portfolio photographs we reviewed showed finish ideas, not this house.
The photographs on this page are from the Designed & Curated portfolio and show finishes we have used on other projects. They are not photographs of this house.
My first question was where the children crossed the cook’s path, and what the cook needed to see from the stove. On site, we watched the route between the kitchen and living room and measured the existing work area around the central island. We found radiant floor heating beneath the kitchen floor, part of the home’s zoned heating system. That mattered because the patterned tile and floor finish could not be treated as an ordinary surface to remove or cut through. The home also had a septic tank, so we kept the kitchen sink and its drain in place rather than changing the plumbing route.
The island and the children’s route
The island already held the cooktop and served as a cooking station, so we kept it doing that job. We mapped the path from the living room into the kitchen and kept the route around the island clear instead of turning the island into a family drop zone. The dual sinks stayed where they were, and the existing cooking layout remained intact. We adjusted the storage within the existing cabinetry to give the family more room for the items that had been left on counters, reducing clutter without changing the footprint.
We also kept the large windows as the visual focus. The hillside setting and broad views toward the Petaluma River and vineyard hills were part of what the owners valued, so we updated the window treatments to provide privacy while keeping the view open. We coordinated the cabinetry and hardware choices with the Italian marble counters and the patterned tile, rather than introducing a finish that competed with them. The wood-paneled vaulted ceiling remained visible above the kitchen, and the living room’s exposed beams continued the same ceiling volume.
Marble, tile and the open room’s sound
The hard marble and tile surfaces and the tall ceiling made the shared space lively when people talked and moved through it. We kept the existing flooring and added a soft rug in the living area, where it softened the sound without covering the kitchen tile or getting in the way of the cooking route. The living room’s cushioned seating and window bench stayed in place as additional soft surfaces. In this open plan, the rug and seating helped the kitchen and living room feel more comfortable together without dividing them visually.
We updated the kitchen lighting controls so the family could adjust the room’s ambient light, and replaced the dated fixture choices with lighting that sat more quietly alongside the wood ceiling and marble. The kitchen’s large windows continued to provide daylight, while the new controls gave the owners a more adaptable setting after dark. We coordinated the electrical work with the home’s battery backup and existing service, and kept the radiant floor system undisturbed. The kitchen remained connected to the living room, but its cooking area had clearer circulation, more contained storage and a better balance of light and sound.
Novato’s recent single-family sales record showed 127 closed homes, a 1973 median build year, and a stock in which 68% were built before 1980. It also recorded a median home size of 2,076 square feet on a 9,500-square-foot lot, with 21% of homes built before 1960, 19% with an HOA fee, and the most common build decades spanning the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s (Redfin Novato sold-home data). That context reinforced our decision to base the work on this house’s actual traffic, finishes and hillside setting, rather than apply a standard kitchen layout.
The lighting work and permit check
We checked the local permit requirements for the electrical lighting work and kept the project scope within the existing kitchen layout. The sink, cooktop, drain route, floor finish and room footprint stayed in place, while the lighting controls and fixtures changed. The sales-data source for the city context was not a permit guide, so we did not use it to claim a specific permit rule. The completed room gave the family clearer movement through the kitchen, better control of the light and more useful storage while preserving the open connection to the living room.
If you are ready to make your kitchen work better for your household, get in touch.
