unmuddling well done : the PROCESS

The biggest project in our 1790 farmhouse would be the kitchen, located in a narrow extension between the original house and the barn (now a garage and bedrooms). The connector, which was there by 1830, probably held a woodshed and summer kitchen. The 1970s owners added a bump-out; another renovation came in the 1990s. By now, the remodeled extension detracted from the integrity of the historic house.

- AMY MITCHELL

The renovation reclaimed the old summer kitchen extension as the kitchen proper and imagined the bumped-out addition as an enclosed former porch. INSET The 1990s peninsular galley wall, 15' long with built-in ovens and a closet, had bisected the narrow room.

Amy Mitchell is an old-house owner, a wife, and mother, blogger, and an interior designer based in New Hampshire.

The bump-out extension, now the keeping-room part of the kitchen, is flanked by the original old house at left and the barn-turned-garage on the right.

Good planning: I’m an interior designer, but I still needed a team. Vermont’s Sandra Vitzthum, much-published in OHJ, was my consulting architect. It was she who saw that “reimposing the historic structure,” by reclaiming the old summer kitchen as today’s kitchen, would inform the rest of the project. Kitchen designer Lisa Muskat of LKM Design was invaluable in designing the implied fireplace alcove for the stove, and other custom details. (Lisa, too, owns a 1790 house, so she gets it.) General contractor Jim Duval, of JD Construction in Bow, N.H., understood my vision and was invaluable in carrying it out.

Creating a focal point