Custom home designer Ralph R. Mackin Architects recently took part in a design project using higher end materials and fixtures, addressing some of the most popular trends in modern kitchen and bath design.  

Darren Mercer, a partner in Mackin Architects, explained that the company is a custom home designer that typically works directly with clients and a builder to put up a new house on the client’s own property. “We develop all the interiors and all the interior design details with them in selection of plumbing fixtures, marble and doing the kitchens and all that,” Mercer said.

But in this case, the company was working on a spec house with a developer it has worked with for 6-8 years, Deep Woods Development in Bedford, NY. A spec house is a house that’s being built by a developer for sale, prior to having a buyer, and it is sold as a completed residence. 

“In the middle of the process when the project was underway, we were contacted by Brizo, and they were interested in our input on their newer line of plumbing fixtures,” Mercer said. 

So both Ralph Mackin and Mercer went to Indianapolis to meet with representatives of Delta Faucet Co.’s premium faucet brand to see what new products were available and where they were going with their design. “It was kind of a transitional approach with traditional elements and more contemporary lines, a combination of the new and old,” Mercer said. “They wanted to know if we’d be interested in taking their product and putting it in one of our houses.”

Mercer said the company couldn’t find an opportunity in its custom home business to fit in the products, since its clients typically already know what they want to use. “So we thought about doing it in the spec house, and it worked out well that it was under construction and that we could put together a project where we would re-look at the kitchen and the bathroom with this type of plumbing fixture design,” Mercer said.

In this particular house, there was no client other than developer Deep Woods Development, and Project Manager Bill Rabin quickly agreed to go along with the Brizo idea and the extra design service that Mackin Architects was offering. “In the spec houses we don’t do as much work interior-wise, we’re just kind of giving them the shell of a house and assisting them a little bit,” Mercer said. “But in this particular case, we ended up getting much more involved, trying to present the product a bit more clearly.”

The Bathroom As A Spa

Enlarge this picture The spec house featured cabinets in a painted glazed finish from Yorktown Woodworking (Yorktown Heights, NY, designed by Ralph Fasano).

The bathroom design decided upon featured Brizo’s faucet in the main sink, a tub filler and all the valves in the tub, and the shower body and handheld sprays, all in a polished nickel finish. Additional design features of the bathroom included a sink and toilet from Kohler, a bubble-jet spa tub from Bain Ultra, cabinets in a painted glazed finish from Yorktown Woodworking (Yorktown Heights, NY, designed by Ralph Fasano), vanity tops and a tub deck in statuary marble, flooring in statuary marble (field) and Pietra Cardosa (accent), tile wainscot in glazed subway tile and walls of paneled gypsum board.

The upscale design of the faucet and showerhead products inspired Mercer to do some extensive restructuring in the house, including building out some of the rooms to achieve his goal of showcasing the products and the traditional and contemporary feel of the bath and kitchen. “We ended up changing both the kitchen and bathroom pretty significantly to make the master bathroom more like a spa with the feeling of a bigger room, expanding it and going along with the look of the fixture in the design of the cabinets and the selection of the materials,” Mercer said, focusing on “traditional materials like statuary marble, but still having more contemporary elements like cleaner lines, lots of glass and just trying to make the bridge between the old and the new.”

The bathroom started off as a much smaller room, Mercer noted, but they eliminated some adjacent closets to make it larger and more spa-like.  Spa bathrooms, where people can get away from everything and relax, are a current trend, he added.

“People want to feel like they are entering a resort where they would be pampered,” Mercer said. “There’s more room and it’s spacious.”

Focus On The Interior

Enlarge this picture The kitchen featured both a clean-up sink and a main sink in stainless steel from Elkay, with a polished nickel touchless faucet from Brizo called Pascal.

Attention to details added to the spa-like feeling, he noted. “There’s a paneled detail on the walls as opposed to just plain Sheetrock or wallpaper, a paneled design. There’s a tile wainscot that goes around the room, which again is a classic, subway tile look.” From there up is an entirely paneled wall and ceiling, something you don’t typically see in bathrooms, he said. “It makes you feel like you’re in a special room, almost like a spa, but it’s got more presence just because of the detailing on the ceiling and the walls,” Mercer said. The way everything comes together, as if it’s just been millwork and trimmed out, makes it a really special room, he added.

The flooring is another area where material selection created a comfortable, yet resort-like feeling in the room. “In the floor, there’s the use of the same statuary marble and accents in the gray granite, and just a feeling that there’s a lot more presence in the room and also more space to feel like you’re relaxing and not confined in a small space.”

But too much of a good thing can detract from the comfort of the room, Mercer pointed out. “Some bathrooms that we’ve seen in some houses are just over-the-top gigantic, and you have to find that medium between something that’s large enough to feel comfortable in without it being too big where you feel like you’re in an institutional bathroom, where you have to walk 10 minutes to get from one fixture to another. This has to be just the right size, not too big, not too small.”

Another unique design feature in the bathroom is a glass enclosure housing the water closet that mirrors the shower enclosure. 

"The water closet is in a room that's much like the shower enclosure, but the glass is frosted. It's a little more contemporary, but there's still the familiar subway tile and marble," he said.

A Kitchen For Communicating

Enlarge this picture An island in the kitchen has a stainless steel prep sink from Elkay with one of Brizo’s island faucets in polished nickel.

“We redesigned the kitchen in the same vein, trying to hold onto the elements of a traditional kitchen but with some more contemporary lines, simplifying what we normally do in cabinets, etc.,” Mercer said.

The kitchen featured both a clean-up sink and a main sink in stainless steel from Elkay, with a polished nickel touchless faucet from Brizo called Pascal. "It's hands-free, so for people who are cooking or prepping food, they don't have to actually touch the faucet," he says. "So it's more of a hygienic approach."

There was also a stainless steel prep sink from Elkay on an island with one of Brizo’s island faucets, again in polished nickel.

“We made those selections, and then we went with materials that we would normally go with, real classic marbles like statuary marble,” Mercer said. “Then we used a pretty traditional granite on the regular countertops. And the cabinets are again pretty simple. They are overlaid doors with stained cherry cabinets. A little bit dressed down from what we normally do, but again, we were trying to keep a cleaner, simpler line to match the more contemporary lines of the faucets.”

Enlarge this picture One of the communicating arch elements described in the article can be seen on far left side of this photo.

The cabinets in the kitchen were supplied by Yorktown Woodworking, and countertops and a backsplash were added in Pietra Cardosa, along with an island top of statuary marble, and an Elkay stainless steel farmer sink and appliances in stainless steel. 

Architectural design elements were used to open up the kitchen to other rooms in the house. “We ended up widening the opening between the kitchen and the breakfast room so that it has a long, wide elliptical arch that allows it to communicate with the breakfast room,” Mercer said. “Another arch takes you into the family room with a large stone fireplace. We wanted to make the kitchen, even though it had a separate identity, very open and communicating with the adjacent rooms. The archway again is more of a traditional feature of a more traditional home, brought back into a more contemporary kitchen.”

Following The Trends

This current trend toward customized baths and kitchens influenced a lot of the design decisions, Mercer said. “People are trying to bridge between the traditional, more familiar forms and the more modern conveniences they have in kitchens now, like Brizo’s touchless faucet. There are a lot more items that are high-tech out there in kitchens, and when you blend them together, you try to have a nice mixture of that aesthetic where it’s clean and contemporary, but still familiar in a traditional way.” 

He said the idea is to keep things simple, “with more detail in the cabinets and things like that, but simpler lines, not so much clutter, not so much heavy detail with the tile work and the backsplash. In this case, we just did a simple granite backsplash without tile, to give it a more Zen, clean look.”

Enlarge this picture The exterior of the spec house designed by Mackin Architects.