Making Spaces

by T.J. Clemente

With the summer season fast approaching, one of the most popular winter projects in any host or hostess’s home is making a space for summer guests that is both beautiful and accommodating. The guest wings in the Hamptons’ elegant houses mirror hotel suites, in that they incorporate kitchenettes, refrigerators and entertainment centers so as to offer guests their own space in which to relax without interfering with the daily hustle and bustle of a busy household. Because most of us do not have the space to sanction off a wing of our homes as a guest suite, adding some creative camouflage to necessary appliances can make it possible to equip your guest quarters with all the luxuries of a five star hotel suite while retaining the gracious appearance of a traditional room.

As a real estate investor with properties across the country including a rental home in East Hampton, Lynn Ronchetto has become an expert in providing modern comforts seamlessly integrated into traditional décor. Recently, she remodeled one of her properties, a studio apartment in Aspen, Colorado, to utilize the small space with maximum efficiency and taste. Her plan was to conceal the television and refrigerator inside furniture and scale back the size of the eating table and its huge chairs to add more storage space and increase the amount of space in the unit.

So she went out and purchased an entertainment center that was very streamlined, with drawers where anything could be stored. Thus the huge television is no longer a commanding presence in the small space. The next step was to reconfigure the dining area, because the table dominated too much of the space in the studio apartment. Relentlessly searching the Internet, she located a furniture store that made drop leaf tables, which create a to tight fit to the wall and then can be opened up to accommodate at least four diners. Lynn then went to warehouse store too get the correct stain color to match the shade of the drop leaf table with the entertainment center. She finished with protecting topcoat to act as a guard against spills. She discarded the original chairs and replaced them with tasteful Parsons’ chairs so that the chairs could be used both as kitchen chairs and furniture to comfortably sit and read or watch television.

Hiding the small refrigerator was the next project. After careful thought and research, she decided to conceal it in a kitchen cabinet and she easily found the perfect fit with a stock item also from a warehouse store. The trick here was to make sure that both the door of the cabinet and the refrigerator opened freely and stayed closed tightly. On top of the stock kitchen cabinet, a custom piece of butcher block was fitted and finished with a sealant to prevent it from cracking. A hole was drilled into the back of the stock kitchen cabinet so that the refrigerator cord would be less visible.

After checking that the electricity required would not strain the outlets, a surge bar was put up against the wall behind the cabinet to tastefully conceal the plugs from the television, refrigerator, VCR, DVD, microwave and lamp. With the drop leaf table tucked comfortably up against the wall, it was decided, for safety reasons, that the microwave oven should be placed on top of it, or on top of the stock kitchen cabinet, according to the user’s preference. Concealing it might be a fire hazard.

With all these changes completed, the studio apartment seems to be roomier. One can navigate about with greater ease and, quite frankly, it looks so much better because it seems less cluttered. After finishing these changes early last December, Lynn’s studio apartment was rented out for the whole winter season. In fact, it was used to show other apartment owners what could be done to increase needed space in studio apartments. This same principle will work here in the Hamptons.