Bespoke Kitchen & Dining Room Home Addition in Alpine, Utah
1,000 Square Feet That Changed Everything: A Kitchen and Dining Room Addition in Alpine
There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes from a home that doesn’t quite fit the way you live. Not broken, exactly. Just wrong. The kitchen is too small to cook in comfortably. The dining room can’t seat everyone. And a sectional — the one piece of furniture the family actually loves — is so oversized for the existing living room that it blocks the path to the kitchen entirely.
That was the situation when this family in Alpine, Utah came to us. They weren’t looking for a cosmetic refresh. They needed more space — and they needed it to feel like it had always been there.
The Addition: 1,000 Square Feet
We added approximately 1,000 square feet to the kitchen, dining room, and living area. That kind of square footage changes the math on everything. The sectional that had been fighting for space suddenly fit. The kitchen expanded into the new footprint. The dining room became its own real space. And the living room opened up with a ceiling height that makes the entire area feel generous and connected.
The way the ceilings define each zone is one of the things that makes this addition special. The kitchen has beams — structural beams wrapped in wood, with additional faux beams added to carry the design intent — that give it a grounded, crafted feel. The dining room opens into a vaulted ceiling. The living room beyond it rises even higher. The rooms flow into each other while each maintaining its own character.
The Kitchen
The kitchen direction was completely reconsidered. We changed the layout, expanded into the new space, and gave the family a kitchen that finally matched how they cook and entertain.
The cabinetry is walnut — warm, substantial, with decorative accents on select door fronts that give the kitchen personality without demanding attention. The countertops are high-quality quartz. The stone backsplash runs the full length of the kitchen and continues into the dining room, creating the feeling of a single stone wall that anchors the entire space.
The refrigerators deserve their own mention. The homeowners chose a pair of commercial-style units — a new category of appliance that takes the scale and storage capacity of a commercial refrigerator and redesigns it for residential use. Full-sized, full-featured, and striking. They’re one of the first things people notice when they walk into the room.
“They’re a new version of commercial fridges — the company redesigned a commercial fridge to function in a home. They have all the space, but all the features of a residential fridge. I really like how big they are.”
Light, Air, and Connection to the Outside
The addition brought with it a fundamental change in how the home relates to the outdoors. We added large windows throughout the new space and installed a full-light multi-slide door that opens to a 9-foot-wide opening when fully retracted. When the weather cooperates, the interior and exterior become one continuous space.
We also opened up the wall around the fireplace to let light pour in from the front of the home — a detail that changed the feel of the room significantly.
The Integration
The hardest part of any addition isn’t the new construction — it’s making the new feel inseparable from the old. We extended the existing rooflines over the addition so that from the street, there’s no visible indication that the house was ever expanded. Inside, the engineered wood flooring runs continuously from the original home into the addition. You can’t tell where the old house ends.
The one structural beam that couldn’t be hidden was wrapped in wood and supplemented with matching faux beams — transforming what was an engineering necessity into a design feature that gives the kitchen real character.
The Finish
This was a whole-home renovation, and the family moved out for the duration. That gave us the access to do the work right without the complications of working around an occupied home. The finish work throughout reflects that — from the casing around every door to the built-in benches to the trim details that most people don’t consciously notice but always feel.
That’s what we mean when we talk about craft. It’s in the details that nobody asks about but everybody experiences.
The kitchen and living area are now their favorite rooms in the house. They’re always in there. That’s the best outcome a renovation can have.
