The owners of this house asked Advance Design Studio, in Gilberts, Ill., to remodel their kitchen to include a multiple-function island for family gatherings and entertaining and complement their contemporary art collection. Senior project designer and co-owner Christine Jurs accommodated these requests by opening up the wall between the kitchen and sunroom and extending the kitchen island into that space.
As a result of the expansion, the ceiling over the island had two heights — 8 feet by the kitchen and a 10-foot vaulted ceiling in the sunroom. Jurs used a soffit to bridge that height variation. “It makes the island feel more intimate and creates a platform for these neat hand-blown glass pendants,” Jurs says. The crew created a cardboard template of the soffit to determine the shape. “There are a lot of hard lines in the kitchen. The clients wanted something with softer lines to mimic the curvy, wavy lines in the art collection,” Jurs says.
The client showed the designer an Andy Warhol painting she liked and Jurs asked faux painting specialist Dan Collins of Dan Collins Decorating, Crystal Lake, Ill., who had already painted all the walls on the main floor, to recreate the bold graphic on the soffit.
