Kristy Weyhrich has an eye for things. As the force behind her business W Design, Weyhrich has designed promotional items for Albertsons, the Idaho Shakespeare Festival and more over the years. Her designs tend to live on paper, but when she was ready to renovate her 1960s kitchen, she put her design sensibilities to work on a much larger scale. She teamed up with longtime friend Betsy McFadden of McFadden Design Inc. to give her kitchen a bright new life.

“I’m a graphic designer, but I’ve always had an interest in interior design,” Weyhrich says.

CLOSE QUARTERS

The renovation project offered a chance for Weyhrich to stretch her creative wings and satisfy her practical needs at the same time.

The family kitchen was simply too small.

Built in 1964, the ranch-style home is tucked away in the North Boise Highlands neighborhood overlooking Crane Creek Country Club.

The family, the third to own the home, has lived in the home for 11 years. The house had great bones but needed some updates. (The previous owner had been there for 30 years.)

“We almost prefer it to be a blank slate, and it really was,” Weyhrich says.

The home is roomy, with 3,400-square feet, but the 8 foot-by-10 foot kitchen was a source of frustration. It was U-shaped and ideal for one person, meaning Weyhrich typically did the cooking while her husband, Josh Evett, and their 13-year-old son Griffin Evett, would stay out of her way.

Guests, who tend to gather in the kitchen, would create a log jam at the base of the “U,” and there wasn’t enough flow-through space for people to mingle as Weyhrich was preparing food.

“It was just not functional,” Weyhrich says. “I love to cook and entertain, and people would just get stuck.”

McFadden, who has been a guest at some of the events hosted by Weyhrich and Evett, went to work on a new design that would make the space more functional while also providing some much-needed updates.

CREATIVE FORCES

The two women brought their unique skills to the table. Weyhrich collected examples of kitchens she admired, tearing out magazine photos and printing out online articles.

She fell in love with a kitchen she spotted on HGTV and went online to get images to show McFadden. From there, ideas started to flow.

McFadden worked on the design in August 2009.

“When I drew it up, I was so excited to show it to her I couldn’t sleep,” she says.

The work was done by Dan Hemmer of Hemmer Construction in January and February 2010.

The finished project is both modern and functional, with open, stainless-steel shelves and elegant marble counters and backsplash.

McFadden’s plan called for inset cabinets and a layout that would allow enough room for Weyhrich to display art — something McFadden knew her friend would want — and a generous lighting plan.

Weyhrich wasn’t concerned about the project harming their friendship. Instead, she considered it an advantage to work with someone she considers a close friend.

“Knowing how well she knows me...” she says.

McFadden says Weyhrich’s careful planning and attention to both design and detail were assets from the get-go.

“I only had to draw up the plan once, and we went to town. ... She’s a unique client. She has such an incredible eye,” McFadden says. “We had a blast.”

SMART CHOICES

Weyhrich wanted her family’s new kitchen to look great, but she also needed it to be functional. It is a working room. Griffin sits at the kitchen table to do homework. Weyhrich, who works from her home, uses it as a conference area when she meets with clients.

The family also needed a table big enough for meals together, as well as any guests.

A banquette table was designed to meet everyone’s standards. Chapel Hill Cabinetry, based in Nampa, made the banquette top, and the base was made by a steel fabricator.

The original kitchen felt closed off because of an adjoining wall that led to a utility hall. McFadden’s plan removed the wall to open up the kitchen and turned the utility space into a pantry area with a kitchen desk.

The washer and dryer were moved downstairs to a room in the basement that had never been finished. The concrete floors were covered with sheet vinyl, Weyhrich painted the walls a cool shade of blue and a new laundry room was created.

The pantry room is somewhat of a staging area where roll-out shelves are big enough to stash large appliances that aren’t needed every day. Pantry items are stocked on open shelves, and that has been a blessing for Weyhrich.

“It’s nice when you go to the grocery store,” she says. “You can see what you have, and you can do a quick inventory (first).”

Weyhrich fell in love with the look of Vermont Danby Gray marble (something she noticed in a Martha Stewart design), and asked Mesa Tile and Stone about the product. It turned out they had some of that product leftover from the renovation of Idaho’s Capitol building, and Weyhrich was happy to use it in her home. The marble is used on a counter and cut into tile for the backsplash.

The base cabinets with roll-out shelves make it easy to find cookware quickly in the kitchen. (All the cabinets also were made by Chapel Hill Cabinetry in Nampa.) Those open shelves give the room the look of a restaurant kitchen.

And it functions at the level of a restaurant kitchen, thanks to the Wolf professional oven and range (with six burners). All the kitchen appliances were purchased from CHF (Wolf oven and range, microwave, a second Wolf oven and a Liebherr refrigerator).

One of the biggest — and smallest — upgrades can be found on the kitchen wall, where an A-Bus audio system was installed. It allows the family to play music from an iPod (which plugs in from the pantry room) through speakers that were installed in the kitchen and living room, and the music can be controlled from the audio system in the kitchen.

The transformation delighted Weyhrich from a visual and practical standpoint, but it has another benefit, too: Her husband, Josh, has discovered he loves to cook.

“He cooks the Sunday dinners,” Weyhrich says.

Chereen Langrill, a graduate of Boise State University, has been a journalist in Idaho for more than 15 years. A freelance writer, she enjoys covering all aspects of Idaho — and it's friendly Idahoans. Chereen loves walking in the Foothills with her dog, Lulu, and her husband, Idaho Statesman sports reporter Chris Langrill.