What you are looking at here is the space between the kitchen and dining room in my sister Diane’s Atlanta home. This space, often called the butler’s pantry, was simply a nook before the kitchen renovation that Diane and her husband Ed undertook recently.

The butler’s pantry contained a lovely antique cabinet in which Diane stored some of her Spode china. The rest of the china was in the formal dining room in an antique sideboard. The kitchen renovation expanded to include turning the butler’s pantry into a wet bar and replacing the sideboard in the dining room with a built-in buffet.

Diane chose glass-fronted cupboards above the wet bar to show off her vintage glassware. Alas, it virtually disappeared against the white walls and glass shelves. What the cupboards needed was some depth of color. Her clever solution was to cover foam core with a rich paisley home dec fabric and place it on the back wall of the glass cupboard.

Here’s a look at the fabric with the cupboard doors open . . .

. . . and closed:

Don’t you love the play of pattern between the swirls of the paisley and the straight lines of the basketweave backsplash?

Up next: the new built-in buffet in the dining room. Please come back for a look!

For the last 15 years (at least) my husband and I have traveled from our home in Portland, Oregon to Norcross, Georgia to spend Thanksgiving with my twin Diane and her husband Ed. It’s a tradition we treasure.

Every year Diane would comment on how much easier it would be to prepare Thanksgiving dinner if her kitchen had two ovens. The two-oven conversation often evolved into what other changes she would make in her kitchen and dining room. The other big ticket item on her wish list was a built-in buffet in the dining room to display the set of Spode china that Ed’s mother passed on to them many years ago. Ed and Diane wanted a buffet that evoked the one in Ed’s family home in Laurelhurst, a lovely old residential neighborhood in Portland.

As I write this post, Diane is in her newly renovated kitchen making pumpkin pies. I’ll be joining her in the kitchen shortly to help with other tasks in preparation for tomorrow’s Thanksgiving feast for a dozen.

As often happens, what started out as a simple remodeling project — in this case, creating space for a second oven and building a buffet — turned into a complete renovation. In the process, Diane gained a kitchen worthy of the pages of House Beautiful, a wet bar in the butler’s pantry, and a built-in buffet that beautifully showcases her Rosalie Spode.

Let’s take a look at Diane’s new kitchen. First, the northwest corner:

The southwest corner:

Looking south-southeast:

This view from the northeast corner takes in a good part of the kitchen:

This is the time of year we tend to reflect on the things for which we are thankful. You can bet that Diane is thankful for her beautiful new kitchen!

In my next post I’ll show you the dining room buffet and the butler’s pantry. Diane did something very clever in the latter with a piece of home dec fabric. I hope you’ll come back in a few days for a look. In the meantime, I send my best wishes for a wonderful Thanksgiving! I hope you get to spend it with people you love.

When sister Diane and I visited sister Reigh in Idaho over Memorial Day weekend, we went to HomeFabrics and Rugs, a home decorating fabric store in Boise with an incredible selection of high quality fabrics and trims, matched by amazingly low prices. Diane found a beautiful piece of home dec fabric for a dollar a yard. Too good to be true? Well, there was a hitch: she had to buy what was on the bolt. As it happened, there were 10 yards of fabric on the bolt. There went 10 bucks. For another $10, Diane shipped the fabric home to Georgia. She had no idea what to do with it but just knew it would look good somewhere in her home.

She actually found two places to use the fabric. First, she had the two vintage slipper chairs in the downstairs guest room recovered. Here is a picture of one of the slipper chairs before . . .

. . . and after:

The slipper chairs were originally covered in a velvety green plush, with a gathered skirt that went to the floor. The newly recovered chairs are more tailored, with a shorter skirt that’s pleated rather than gathered. The fabric is a brushed cotton, in a medium-scale print that goes very well with the other furnishings in the room.

This picture of the second slipper chair gives you a good look at the front:

I think they are just charming! The best part is that there was enough fabric left over from having the chairs upholstered to recover the four chairs in Diane’s kitchen dining area. She waited till I arrived for my annual Thanksgiving visit so we could tackle that project together.

Here are two chairs, the one on the right newly recovered and the one on the left waiting its turn:

I’d say Diane’s $20 was money well spent, wouldn’t you?