Modish

Joni has been featured on HGTV for Eclectic, Elegant Bathroom Remodel

"After” photos by MIranda Kimberlin unless otherwise noted

House at a Glance
Who lives here: Interior designer Joni Spear and her husband, Dan
Location: St. Louis
Size: 1,808 square feet (168 square meters); four bedrooms, three bathrooms

Before: The lackluster 9-by-12-foot kitchen inspired an addition as part of the renovations. Homeowner association rules didn’t allow the couple to alter the front of the house or add to the height of it, so they added 150 square feet off the back. They pushed the rear wall, seen here with the windows, 10 feet into the backyard. This gave them room to expand the kitchen and the primary bedroom and bathroom. Spear then reconfigured the existing space to add a mudroom, laundry room, pantry and walk-in closet.

She created the architectural plans, then had an architect draw them up and stamp them for permitting. 

Before: “I love a good treasure hunt because I like to incorporate old and storied pieces in all my projects,” Spear says. She combed local architectural salvage, reclaimed-lighting and antique stores when furnishing the house. “This cabinet had been some sort of built-in hallway storage in a local house,” she says.

When Spear told her contractor she wanted to integrate the piece into the kitchen cabinetry, he was unenthusiastic. In fact, he told her it was “hideous.” Unfazed, she disagreed. When he told her it wouldn’t fit, Spear suggested he add legs to it. When he said he didn’t have any, she got them herself. He said it still wouldn’t fit, so she had him add crown molding to the top. And rather than replace the hardware, as he had suggested, she cleaned up the existing hardware herself. 

The back wall of the kitchen did not go as planned, but the designer was well-versed in improvising. “I designed the entire kitchen around an 8-foot-wide window over the sink,” Spear says. “But somehow the architect wrote it as 6 feet, and I didn’t catch the error when I approved the plans.” Because of the way the addition was built during the winter, Spear wasn’t able to see the window and realize that a mistake had been made until after it was installed. 

 “It would have taken nine weeks to get the right window, and I was devastated because I’d planned the entire kitchen around it,” she says. But designers are problem solvers who have to think on the fly, and Spear quickly decided to accept it, move on and come up with a plan. “I extended the china cabinet on one side and the coffee bar-appliance garage on the other to fit the scale of the window,” she says.

There was a silver lining: The mistake left ample room on either side of the window for some more statement lighting. This gave Spear an opportunity to go on another treasure hunt. “I went to this reclaimed-lighting place and asked the owner if they had anything in the basement. He said they did but that the basement was gross. I said, ‘Good. I want to go down there,’ ” she says. “These were on the basement floor, covered in dust, but I could see that they were stunning solid brass fixtures.” 

Photo by Alise O’Brien

After: The designer determined that the kitchen was the best spot for the restaurant pendants’ new life. The light fixtures are another conversation starter in the room.

Around the perimeter of the room, Spear had the cabinets painted a custom mushroom color and used soapstone for the countertops. She chose 4-by-4-inch zellige tiles for the backsplash. “Originally I had planned for subway tile, but 4-by-4-inch tiles were what they used in the 1950s, so ultimately I went with those,” she says. “I used a running bond pattern instead of a grid pattern typical of the 1950s to keep it fresh. I love all the imperfections that show that this tile is handmade.” 

The appliances are matte white with brushed bronze and copper hardware. The metal accents tie in with the mix of metals Spear used on the lighting and cabinet hardware.

“My cabinets were made by an Amish craftsman,” she says. “I told him I wanted some barnwood on the vent hood, and when he asked me what kind of barnwood I wanted, I said, ‘Really old barnwood.’ I actually never saw it until it was installed, and it’s perfect. It warms up the kitchen and it inspired me to use the butcher block on the bar and wood counter stools.” 

Before: The original primary bathroom was small and hadn’t been updated in decades. 

Spear considered other elements that would make the bathroom easier to clean. The flooring is a large-format marble-look porcelain tile. “These tiles are 2 feet by 4 feet, so there are not very many grout lines to clean,” she says. The bath and shower surround tiles are also large-format. They fade into the background, allowing the elegantly veined floor to be the star of the space.

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