Appliance.com

Home in Deep River Tracy Shiring likes to joke that her husband, Mark, never should have left the room to put their young girls to bed that one spring evening. But if he hadn't, then perhaps the Shiring's beautiful Victorian-style home in Deep River, CT, wouldn't be what it is today.

The Shiring's home is located in the charming town of Deep River, CT, about 45 minutes southeast of Hartford. Deep River is about 15 square miles, with a population of about 4,600. Ten miles up the Connecticut River from Long Island Sound, the town is centrally located in the state's largest vacation area. "People ask us where we go for vacation, and we tell them, 'Look around. This is vacation!'"

About 2 years ago, while Tracy and Mark were meeting with their architect about an upcoming renovation, Mark briefly left the room to take their daughters, Katelynn and Emma Rose, upstairs for a quick story and then to bed. "He was only gone for about 30 minutes," Tracy recalls, "but by the time he came back, our little renovation project turned into something much larger."

Initially, the Shiring's renovation plans only called for a kitchen remodel. "But at the time, we didn't have much of a eating area, the kitchen really needed updating, and I didn't have any type of pantry for food or for storing my dishes," Tracy says. "I used to store them in our basement, and it was a hassle to run up and down the stairs all of the time."

So when their architect, Thomas Elliott of Westbrook, CT, and Tracy began discussing their renovation plans, they started to dream about ways to make the Shiring home serve their busy family for years to come.

"We discussed how I didn't have a place to store my dishes," Tracy recalls, "along with the fact that we had a lot of room at the back of the house with which to work. So we just decided to knock down some walls and move everything, which included the existing kitchen, out into the yard a little bit." Finding the space wasn't a problem, because the Shiring's property includes more than 2 acres of land.

"So when Mark came back downstairs," Tracy adds, "he was a bit shocked. Half an hour earlier we had discussed a kitchen renovation. Now we were tearing down walls and significantly increasing our square footage and our budget. But ultimately, we agreed that this was a house that we were planning to live in a long time and that the new spaces would serve us well."

So the final plans included completely adding a pantry and a new kitchen, along with a wet bar and a mudroom. The Shiring's also made an outdoor living area with a patio off of the eat-in kitchen. They bumped out the garage 6 feet to add the mudroom, and the back of their house became their new kitchen and patio.
One thing that Mark was not surprised about was their future appliances. Mark has worked in the appliance industry for 10 years, and Tracy has accompanied Mark on a few business trips that involve appliance trade shows, so when it came time to pick the appliances that he and Tracy wanted in their new kitchen and wet bar, decisions were made quickly.

"Mark knew of and liked Dacor appliances," Tracy says. "He knew the company's history and how well the appliances were made. And we knew that we wanted stainless-steel in our new kitchen. Because of his knowledge, he educated me on many of the products that were available."

The Shiring's enjoy cooking, and Dacor appliances are known for supplying serious cooks with serious appliances. A Dacor Epicure gas cooktop (model ESG366SCH) and double wall ovens (model ECD230SCH) were the Shiring's first choice for preparing future home-cooked meals.

The 36-inch stainless-steel cooktop has six, 14,000-BTU burners, 14-inch wide grates, a simmer plate, and a special design to contain spills.

"I like how quickly the cooktop works, and the special flame functions," Tracy says. "There's no guesswork involved in cooking on it."

The Dacor Epicure 30-inch, stainless-steel wall ovens are convection heat, and have 3.9 cubic feet each, electronic controls, dual timers, closed door broiling, and are self-cleaning.

The refrigerator decision was easy as well, Tracy recalls. "I had seen the Kenmore Elite Trio refrigerator, and I liked it immediately," she says. "I like the side by side aspect of the refrigerator portion, and we can store a lot of food in the pullout freezer below."

The Trio design, for a side-by-side refrigerator and one freezer, is a relatively new concept in appliance refrigeration, but it's quickly catching on because it can fit in almost any sized kitchen, in part, because twin refrigerator doors do not need a lot of floor space to swing open.

The refrigerator, model 596.73503201, has 25 cubic feet of storage space. The freezer can hold up to 100 pounds of food. And a slide-out pantry in the refrigerator keeps food up to 5-degrees colder for food freshness. The refrigerator also has an ice and water dispenser. "I'd probably get the same refrigerator again," Tracy adds.

Outside of the appliance decisions, another one of the reasons that the project went so smoothly was the work done by Kitchen Designer Siobhan Daggett of Cucina Design in Branford, CT. Ms. Daggett's work has appeared in many national kitchen design publications.

Ms. Daggett says that after she saw the original kitchen, she knew that it could be improved to make Tracy and Mark's lives easier. "The original kitchen in the home was efficient," she says, "but much smaller, and not allowing for the luxury of the higher end appliances while maintaining counter space for preparation work. Mark and Tracy now have a two-cook kitchen with expansive views to their property and acres of open space to entertain and enjoy with family and friends."

Because the Shiring's new 16 x 27-square-foot kitchen design had many angles, Ms. Daggett says that a real challenge was to overcome those, especially around the sink. "The angles had to be practical enough for easy access to the sink and dishwasher, but also needed to follow the shape of the space that their architect created. Still, he did a fantastic job of creating a visually interesting space."

The Fisher & Paykel DishDrawer dishwasher was actually one appliance that Tracy knew she wanted after seeing it a trade show. "I saw it and thought, 'How cool!'" she says. "I've been pleasantly surprised at how much we like it. We can fit most of our dishes in one drawer only and run just that one. I feel like we have more space than in our previous dishwasher."

Fisher & Paykel DishDrawers are reknown for that: they can hold a large number of dishes, and save time, water, and energy. Because they are two independent dishwashers, you can put delicate crystal in one drawer, and heavily soiled pots in the other, then simply customize the wash in each drawer. And because they are drawers, they require fewer movements to open, load, and close. Mark and Tracy had panels placed over them to match their cabinetry for an integrated look.

"Being a fairly accomplished cook myself, I love the ease of use in this space," says Kitchen Designer Siobhan Daggett. "There are many areas to prep and easy access to all of the appliances. The mixture of painted and glazed maple cabinets makes this a very special room...very casually elegant! Tracy and Mark were extremely flexible in the process allowing me to blend combinations of color and textures adding much input along the way. They truly were happily involved in the entire process from start to finish...a pleasure to work with every step of the way!"

Future Plans?

The Shiring's kitchen renovation began in late summer of 2004 and was officially complete about 6 months later. "Construction wasn't that bad," Tracy recalls, "but it did occur over the holiday season. We just made the best of it. Except for our bedrooms upstairs, on the first floor we essentially lived in one room, which is now our office. And we still celebrated the holidays as normally as possible."

And they don't have to travel very far to find remnants of their past "life" in their home, so to speak. Many of the materials from their previous kitchen were recycled into their new rooms. For example, cabinetry that's above the wet bar is the same cabinetry from the old kitchen, but painted an ocean blue (the actual color is NY State of Mind by Benjamin Moore). The windows in the new kitchen dining area were taken from the old home layout as well.

"Recycling some of the materials not only cut on cost, but also on what we wasted from the tear down," Mark says. "If you can re-use it and it looks good, why not?"

"But we're really happy with the way things turned out," Tracy adds.

So are they finished? "I do have a list," Tracy jokes. "There's always something that can be done." First on the list, she says, is expanding their outdoor area to include a built-in grill, and then renovating their upstairs laundry room. "You can come back after we've finished those projects," Tracy says. "This time, maybe I'll put our girls to bed!" More Editorials