AFTER: Kirsten and Tom Stanley raised the roof and gutted their Gulf Stream kitchen.
Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star
BEFORE: A wall blocked the flow into the Stanleys’ cramped kitchen.
Tom Stanley’s grandparents bought the orange butcher-block table
from the Army airbase that now is home to Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
Tom and Kirsten Stanley renovated their vintage Gulf Stream cottage,
which originally was built for employees of the Gulf Stream Polo Club.
By Christine Davis
Will Kirsten and Tom Stanley be having crab for dinner soon? When renovating, they did find a really big one under the kitchen, so who knows? It might have friends.
Even if not crab, something good is sure to be cooking, and Tom will be doing it.
The couple (who met in high school) love Florida and old houses. Both are long-time Florida people; Tom’s family came to Delray Beach in 1914 and Kirsten’s parents moved here when she was young. Both have experience with building: Kirsten is the executive vice president of Meisner Electric and, Tom, an attorney, is a Gulf Stream town commissioner and former chairman of the Delray Beach Historic Preservation Board.
So, it’s no surprise that they opted to buy and renovate a 1927-era cottage in Gulf Stream.
What is kind of surprising is the unusual accessibility problem they encountered. The kitchen ceiling was too low for Tom, who likes to cook. He’s 6 feet, 4 inches tall and he had to bend down to do the dishes and get to the refrigerator. Can’t have that, notes Kirsten.
But knocking out the false ceiling was just the beginning. The kitchen had other problems. Once the ceiling was removed, they saw that the room wasn’t insulated. The floor was yucky old linoleum and there was no way to save the cupboards — they were too far gone. Everything, in other words, had to go, except for the farmhouse kitchen sink, which they kept.
The adjacent guest suite (which they’ve since repurposed as their master bedroom) had similar problems, so that space needed to be rebuilt, too.
The laundry was in an outside breezeway — not very convenient, says Kirsten — and the garage needed to be torn down and rebuilt to accommodate two cars.
The home’s need for renovation appeared to be the result of sloppy add-ons over time, Kirsten believes, because the heart of the house is perfect. “All we did was paint.”
The living room does have wonderful features: hardwood floor, bead board paneling, cypress ceiling, fireplace and bay window. Just adjacent, to the north, is the original master suite, which is also quite handsome, with a pitched cypress ceiling, bead board paneling and hardwood floors.
Through French doors to the south of the living room is the formal dining room, with another set of French doors that open to a courtyard. “We want to use the patio as an outdoor breakfast area,” Kirsten says.
A third bedroom offers pretty views of the pool area, and the Stanleys already had updated the adjoining bathroom.
It was the kitchen and the guest wing that was discombobulated and kind of thrown together.
“We think the little room in front of our kitchen was the original kitchen,” Tom says. “When we bought the home, a wall had been knocked down between the two spaces, creating a pass-through that was like a bar.”
But from the beginning, it felt like home. “We looked at three houses, and this was the second. The house immediately spoke to us. We deliberated for 45 minutes and said we wanted it,” Tom says.
“The nine-foot ceilings were a key feature. We thought we could work with that, and the house really had good bones.”
They hired Mouw Associates Inc. as general contractors, Roger Cope as architect, Clint Oster with General Landscaping Corp., and Meisner, of course, as electrical contractors.
There were setbacks.
The process of permitting took longer than expected, which changed the construction schedule; and also Kirsten needed to have cancer treatment.
“She doesn’t delegate,” Tom says.
“I had to let decisions be made without me, and act like I was happy with them,” she says, smiling.
But she’s one strong positive thinker. “The flip side: You realize what you really want.”
Over time, they realized they wanted to use the new bedroom as their master suite and they changed the home’s focal point.
“Before, you couldn’t get to the pool from the house, so we reoriented the whole house towards the pool,” Tom explains.
In addition, the home has some wonderful new “old” features — the front screen door and shutters that used to be in Tom’s grandparents’ 1938-era house, and a butcher-block table in their kitchen that his grandparents bought from the Army airbase (now the site of Florida Atlantic University’s campus) after it closed.
Now that the work is done, the couple can finally relax. “It’s an escape and an oasis,” Kirsten says.
“We feel like we are miles away on vacation,” Tom says.
And now, of course, Tom can open the refrigerator door and wash dishes without knocking his head or hurting his back.
AFTER: A new two-car garage eases the Stanleys’ parking situation.
BEFORE: The back portion of the house needed to be rebuilt.
AFTER: Designers re-oriented the house toward the pool.
BEFORE: There was no direct access to the pool from the house.
Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star
Comments