Alamo Heights home modernized with updated kitchen and bathrooms

Deepti and Lucille Rao's Alamo Heights home was built in the early 1990s, and by the time they bought it in 2022, it was aging and in dire need of renovation.

The outdated kitchen had a vast expanse of heavy, wood-fronted cabinetry. There was an impractical Jack-and-Jill bathroom between two of his three bedrooms in the house, and the main suite bathroom was equipped with a corner bathtub.

“That was definitely not our aesthetic,” Deepti Rao said. “So we decided to modernize and revamp things.”

The Lao couple, who are both ophthalmologists, also needed a home where they could live with their two children, a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy.

With the help of design consultant Monica Beyer of San Antonio-based New Generation Kitchen & Bath, they began planning the new kitchen and bathroom last March, with work beginning in June and finishing in August. Ended.

In the kitchen, we chose to refinish the cabinets rather than replace them, painting them a rich cream color inside and out and finishing the look with gold-tone hardware.

“Creamy white feels more open and airy than wood,” says Rao. “It brightens up the kitchen and makes it feel more comfortable.”

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Keeping the cabinets saved the couple an estimated $10,000, Beyer said, while also avoiding the headache of not knowing what would appear on the floor when the cabinets were removed.

“We didn't know if we needed to replace the flooring,” Beyer said. “We were worried that one thing would lead to another, making the project longer and more expensive.”

During a planning meeting, Rao told Beyer he wanted to add two pull-out cabinets. One for placing the trash can near the sink and the other for placing the recycling can. However, getting new cabinet doors with molding that matches your old cabinet doors can be quite difficult. So instead, he took two matching doors from the bathroom of the master suite he was renovating and repurposed them in the kitchen.

“I was attracted to the idea of ​​reusing the door instead of throwing it away,” Rao said.

One of the features they left behind was a large diagonal skylight above the center of the space.

“I love the way the sunlight shines into the house,” she said. She says, “One of the reasons she wanted a white kitchen was because the skylights really accentuate things and brighten up the whole space.”

To allow the kitchen to open up to the adjoining living and dining areas, they removed the pony wall that towered over the quartz-clad peninsula. The new lower countertop is the right height for the couple's two children and also gives them more space to place food and drinks when entertaining.

Rao has a keen eye for interior decoration, and her input was instrumental in updating the kitchen and bathrooms, Beyer said.

“Deepti is extremely detail-oriented, knowledgeable and has great taste,” Beyer said. “She was fun to work with because she knows what she likes and what she doesn't like.”

For example, the white quartz countertop is imbued with subtle gray streaks, a deliberate choice by Mr. Rao.

“There are certainly some beautiful stones available that have more pronounced veins,” she said. “But with stone throughout the kitchen, including the backsplash, we wanted something that wasn’t too flashy and wasn’t all white.”

She also spent a lot of time determining the color temperature of the LED lighting she would install.

“I don't like the blue-white light that I often see,” she said. “But we also didn't want something that was too warm or too yellow.”

She ultimately chose a lamp with a Kelvin rating of 2700, which approximates the color of a traditional incandescent light bulb.

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Rao also opted for a minimalist hood exhaust. They explained that the reason was that they wanted something modern, but not so modern that it would take away from the traditional aesthetic of the house.

“We thought the vents we chose would complement everything else we were doing nicely,” she said.

In other places, they used the master toilet close to the studs.

We replaced the two separate vanity sinks and added a new custom-designed vanity with dual sinks. The original corner bath was removed and a freestanding bathtub was installed, nearly doubling the size of the walk-in shower. By lowering the ceiling, the space feels more open.

The only remaining feature was a large glass block window in the corner of the room overlooking the backyard.

“I didn't know what to replace it with that would let in the same amount of light while still providing the same privacy,” Rao said.

Jack and Jill's bathroom was split in two to make it more comfortable for guests and their daughters and sons in the years to come.

In my daughter's new bathroom, we added a shower stall with a handheld sprayer in addition to a shower head, and a barn door shower door to save space.

Her son's bathroom has a space-saving, round glass door that Beyer says is the smallest corner shower unit available in North America and slides open rather than swings open. Rao said his son thinks it looks like a rocket ship.