Guest Blogger: Design Galleria Kitchen & Bath Studio


Editor’s note: To kick off showhouse season, we’ve asked Design Galleria Kitchen and Bath Studio for a sneak peek into the firm’s design process as it prepares for the opening of the 43rd annual Decorators’ Show House & Gardens on April 26. 

The firm’s task: To update not one, but three spaces in the historic Atlanta mansion, built in 1926 with a prominent location on West Paces Ferry. With just six weeks until the Show House’s official opening, Design Galleria takes over AH&L’s blog to chronicle their adventures in remodeling. 

The dust is still settling, but the demolition phase at the 2014 Decorators’ Show House has come to a close! Now we are in the process of erecting new walls and running electrical and plumbing to accommodate our updated designs for the master suite, kitchen and pool house.   

At Design Galleria Kitchen and Bath Studio we spend a lot of time engineering our plans on the front end so that we can provide extremely detailed construction plans, thus saving time and money on the back-end. More often than not, builders are only provided finished cabinetry designs and are then expected to just “figure it out” and “make it work” onsite, which is a recipe for miscommunication. We believe that detailed plans are the key to keep things running smoothly on a jobsite and avoiding duplication of efforts. Below is just one of 18 pages of mechanical plans that we provided our builder and subcontractors!

The left wing of the second floor has undergone the biggest transformation as we repurpose multiple rooms to create a glorious master retreat.

Here are the before shots of the guest bedroom/master bath conversion along with progress pictures showing all the new framing, electrical wiring and plumbing pipes.   

The second room being converted in the master suite is the lady’s bath. It’s being turned into a lady’s master closet, which shares a wall with the master bedroom. We decided to move that shared wall 12 inches for a few reasons, which will be explained further in one of our upcoming posts.  

The kitchen demolition was less involved because we did not remove or add any walls. However, we did move the gas line for the new range location and installed all new electrical and plumbing. The cabinetry was delivered today and our talented team of carpenters will begin the installation next week.

Last on our list of areas to tackle was the demolition of the pool house. We had to break up half of the concrete slab in order to relocate and consolidate all of the plumbing to one side of the room. We did this in order to create a larger entertaining space. 

We look forward to continuing to share the evolution of this project with you! Next week, we will detail how we came up with the final kitchen cabinetry design.

Written by Kelly Carlisle