Greenwood Drive is one of the quieter streets in Des Moines’ South of Grand neighborhood. The homes sit back from the road on sweeping, sloped lawns lined with mature trees, and most of them have been standing for well over a century. You could drive past our client’s home and never really notice it, which is partly what makes it so wonderful. It’s a hidden gem waiting to be discovered.
We had been working with these clients for a few years before the kitchen conversation started. First, we had tackled their home office, the stairway runner, and some furniture reupholstery – smaller projects that let us get to know each other and get to know the house. When they finally said they were ready to think about the kitchen, we understood exactly why they had been putting it off. Determining how to approach modernizing a dated dysfunctional kitchen in a historic and authenic way must have felt daunting and overwhelming.
The existing kitchen had been renovated at some point in the 1990s, and it showed. Dark cherry cabinetry with black countertops, no connection whatsoever to the historic character of the rest of the home. It felt as if someone had dropped a completely different kitchen into a house that deserved so much more.
And then there was the chimney. A prior owner had installed a roasting spit inside it and clad the exterior in shiny black granite tile. The chimney ran from the basement all the way through the roof, so removing it would have been structurally invasive and enormously expensive. We knew early on that we would need to work with it rather than against it.
Embracing the Unexpected
That chimney ended up becoming a favorite part of the finished kitchen. We opened up the front of the structure as much as possible while maintaining the chimney itself, wrapped it in drywall to create a clean enclosure, and then designed a hutch cabinet to sit within the opening.
We wanted it to feel like an antique piece that had always been part of the house, with seeded glass, an arched door front, and brass latch hardware that felt collected rather than coordinated. Our cabinet maker built it to fit the opening exactly, and now it reads as one of the most charming moments in the room rather than the structural problem it actually is.
That decision set the tone for everything else. We brought in Oakwood Builders Group as our construction partner because they share our deep respect for historic homes and understand how to treat these spaces with the care they require. Together, we reworked the layout to maximize countertop space and storage, and we began making material choices that would feel authentic to a home of this vintage.
The cabinetry is a simple recessed panel design inspired by the original doors and built-ins elsewhere in the house. A kitchen in a 1903 home would not have had ornate or fussy cabinetry; it would have been straightforward, functional, and well-built with mostly freestanding pieces.
The new cabinets themselves are not white, though they might read that way in photographs. The color is actually a warm, creamy off-white closer to linen, and we painted all of the trim to match so that the cabinetry and the architecture feel like a single cohesive piece rather than something applied on top.
Soapstone, Handmade Tile, and Unlacquered Brass
The soapstone counterop was one of the first decisions we felt certain about. Carrara marble would have been the obvious choice. But, for a kitchen that works this hard every day, marble would patina very quickly, and we knew our clients would not love that. We never considered quartz because, in a house like this one, a manufactured stone would have felt immediately out of place. Quartzite, while beautiful, feels more current than historical.
Soapstone has been used as a countertop material in historic homes for decades, so it felt inherently authentic. This slab in particular has a distinct blue-green undertone that connects beautifully to the rest of the home’s palette. Blue is the through line in this house, with every room carrying some shade of it. Each room has its own character while remaining part of a cohesive whole, and the soapstone picks up on that thread in a way that feels effortless rather than coordinated.
The backsplash tile is a handmade ceramic with a crackle glaze that has real depth to it. It does not lay perfectly flat, and you can see the slight irregularity that comes from something made by hand. In 1903, if there was tile on a kitchen backsplash at all, it probably would have been a subway tile in roughly this proportion, and it likely would have been white. We kept the scale and the format but elevated it with that watery, blue-green glaze that relates back to the soapstone and injects a subtle dose of color into an otherwise neutral space.
For the hardware, we sourced solid brass pieces with a beautiful existing patina and intentionally mixed the types: cup pulls on the lower drawers, handles on some cabinets, knobs on others, and small latches on the oak hutch. That mix is something you would have seen in a home of this period, where hardware was added and replaced over decades rather than selected all at once from a single catalog.
The brass tipping rail on the range hood adds one more layer of period-appropriate detail. Above the hood, the recessed panels are actually operable touch latches that conceal access to the hood mechanism and provide additional storage for items that are not needed every day.
The light fixtures are by deVOL, and choosing them was a deliberate act of restraint. There are many popular pendants available that are more dramatic and more on trend, but I wanted the opposite of all of that. In a home like this when the kitchen was first built, you would not have had oversized statement fixtures over a work surface. You probably would have had two or three smaller pendants, simple and functional. These deVOL fixtures with their handmade porcelain shades, twisted cord, and exposed bulbs feel like something left over from the home’s earliest years, a little bit feminine and a little bit industrial, and their small scale is exactly right for this room.
The Considerate Details That Made This Kitchen Work
Some of our proudest moments in this kitchen are actually invisible. To the right of the oak hutch, cabinet doors pocket back to reveal an appliance garage with a continuous countertop running through. When those doors are closed, there is no visual clutter, and when they are open, everything is right at hand.
We designed large pantry cabinets to the right of the refrigerator with internal storage organizers customized to how these clients actually cook and what they reach for every day.
On the island, facing the refrigerator side, we located a lift-up mixer shelf tucked away inside the cabinetry. Our client loves to bake, so we placed it where she would have the most countertop space around her and would never need to haul a heavy mixer out of a lower cabinet.
We were also very strategic about how we designed and situated the coffee bar. The nook by the window, with the beverage fridge below and deep green cabinetry in Sherwin-Williams Homburg Gray, sits directly adjacent to the door that leads to the dining room.
In a grand home built in 1903, that door was almost certainly how staff moved between the kitchen and the dining table. Today it stays propped open most of the time, and that counter becomes the natural staging area for meals, drinks, and anything that needs to be close at hand when they are entertaining. The view from the dining room through that open door is one of our favorite moments in the home.
A Laundry Room Worth Spending Time In
The laundry room, tucked just off the kitchen, was also part of this renovation. The original cabinets were beyond repair and lacking in functional storage. We drew from the period details for design inspiration and created a space that relates back to the kitchen while carrying its own distinct personality.
The wallpaper is charming in a way that feels timeless rather than trendy, the kind of botanical print that someone living here in the 1940s or 1950s might have chosen. Houses evolve over time, and the goal was never to create a period reproduction but rather to layer in something that felt like part of the home’s ongoing story.
We applied the white paint hue from the kitchen walls and flipped it onto the laundry cabinets, which is one subtle connection between the two rooms. The dark slate hex tile on the floor is something you would have absolutely seen in a home built during this era and through the 1920s and 1930s. Its soft black tone echoes the soapstone countertops in the kitchen.
The vintage-style wall-mounted utility sink was both a design choice and a practical one. If we had tried to achieve the same large basin in a standard sink cabinet, it would have required a much deeper cabinet and stolen precious storage space on either side. This solution gave us that large, functional basin for rinsing and filling while keeping the footprint minimal.
Above it, shelves hold our client’s cookbook collection. The countertops throughout the laundry room are an oiled walnut that brings warmth into the space without introducing another stone surface. The result is a small room that genuinely makes you want to actually spend time in it, which is about the highest praise a laundry room can receive.
It Just Feels Like It Belongs
We were back in this kitchen recently, and what struck us most is how calm it feels. The renovation doesn’t stand out, which is exactly what we hoped to achieve. The kitchen simply feels like it is supposed to be there. It does not call attention to itself, it does not shout what decade it was built in, and it does not compete with the rest of the house. It is a kitchen that could have been designed at any point in this home’s 120-year history.
If you are living in a historic home and thinking about renovating a kitchen that no longer serves you, we want you to know that modern function and historic character are not in conflict. You can have an induction cooktop and a fully integrated refrigerator and a lift-up mixer shelf and still honor the house that has been standing on your street for more than a century. You just need a team that sees your home the way you do, not as an outdated relic to modernize, but as a cherished piece of history to steward into the future with love.
Morris Lare partnered with Oakwood Builders Group on this project. View the full project gallery.
