By Keysha Drexel
Journal editor
Just as it probably was 60 years ago, the heart of a house in the 1700 block of Windsor Boulevard in Homewood is its kitchen.
That’s where Jason and Natalie Ferguson feed their young daughters breakfast and where they sit together to catch up on the events of their day.
But enjoying the space wasn’t always this easy, the couple said.
After six decades of hosting family dinners, holiday celebrations and the small moments that make everyday life special, the kitchen of the 1954 house was looking a little heartbroken.
“The kitchen was really bad. It needed so much work,” Natalie said.
And work it got. The Fergusons just finished a fourth-month renovation of their kitchen, which included taking out a wall and peeling off five layers of linoleum flooring.
Jason bought the house before he and Natalie were married after his software development job brought him to the Birmingham metro area from his native Atlanta.
“I knew it was a fixer-upper, and I loved the location. I either work from home or on the road, so I could have lived anywhere, but I liked Homewood,” Jason said.
Natalie moved from her native Delaware to the Birmingham area about nine years ago to pursue a master’s degree in English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
“But I never finished graduate school,” she said, laughing. “Instead, I got a physical therapist assistant’s degree from Jeff State. That seems a little more practical in today’s world than a master’s degree in English.”
Jason and Natalie moved into the house almost six years ago and were married in August 2010. They welcomed their first child, Cecily, two and half years ago. Their second daughter, Marcella, was born six months ago.
“I guess it sounds kind of crazy to start a major kitchen renovation when you’re pregnant, but we wanted the kitchen to be finished by the time our second daughter was born,” Natalie said.
Before the kitchen renovation, the couple had tackled one major project in the house each year, Jason said.
“My first water bill was $400, and that’s when we discovered the water leaks,” he said. “There are a lot of surprises when you buy an older house, but I knew that I could fix it up myself or contract out the parts I couldn’t do myself.”
The couple also had a new roof put on the house, replaced the heating and cooling system and called in a plumber to take care of the leaky pipes.
“Then we decided that we had to do something about the kitchen. It couldn’t wait any longer,” Natalie said.
Natalie said as the cook in the family, renovating the kitchen was something she wanted to do right away after the couple settled into the house.
“But we did it the right way and set a budget and saved up so we didn’t have to finance anything,” she said.
Natalie said the kitchen renovation was important to her because she wants her daughters to have the same kind of home experience she had growing up in Delaware.
“I come from a big Italian family, and life was completely centered around the kitchen,” she said. “My parents and grandparents always had something cooking on the stove, and it is a place that holds a lot of good memories. I want that for my children, too.”
Jason said his favorite part of the kitchen renovation project was probably its beginning, which included taking out a wall that divided the kitchen from a small dining area.
“I did the demolition myself, and that was pretty satisfying,” Jason said. “But you quickly learn that the best part of demolition is those first 10 minutes when you’re tearing everything down. The rest of the time is spent hauling stuff out to the street.”
And while the couple could handle the tearing-down part of the renovation, they knew they needed help when it came to the next phase of the project.
“Neither one of us really has an eye for design, so we went to Kathy (Owens) of Kathy’s Designer Kitchens,” Jason said. “We saw her ads in the paper and her shop happened to be across the street from where I was having lunch one day, so I decided to stop in and see about getting some professional help with our kitchen.”
The couple also enlisted the help of builder Elliot Pike of ELM Construction on Rocky Ridge Road in Vestavia Hills.
“Elliot was phenomenal. We couldn’t have asked for a better contractor, and we couldn’t have been more pleased with how everything turned out in the kitchen,” Jason said.
The couple started the renovation project in January 2013.
After taking out the wall dividing the kitchen and dining areas, the first part of the kitchen renovation involved switching the electric appliances to ones that run on natural gas.
“That wasn’t a visual improvement part of the project, but it was something that was important to me,” Natalie said. “I had never cooked on an electric range before we moved in here, and I really, really missed cooking with gas.”
Next, the couple addressed the kitchen cabinets.
“They were in sad, sad shape,” Natalie said. “They were the original cabinets, and we know that for sure because we found a stamp with ‘April 1954’ on it on the inside of one of the cabinet doors.”
With the advice of Owens and Pike, the couple came up with a plan to reconfigure the newly expanded kitchen space to give Natalie plenty of room to whip up favorite family recipes.
But while all the renovation work was being done, Natalie found herself trying to cook the family’s meals out of a spare bedroom that had been temporarily converted into a makeshift kitchen.
“We put up some shelving in one of the bedrooms and moved the kitchen table back there while the major work was being done in the kitchen,” she said. “I had a hotplate and a crockpot back there, and that was pretty much it. I really learned to love that crockpot and got a lot of great recipes from my friends.”
The couple also ate out a lot during the months the kitchen was being redone, Jason said.
“That’s one thing you don’t really think about when you’re budgeting for a kitchen makeover, but I would advise people to include that in the project’s costs,” he said. “We did a lot of looking around to see which local restaurants had the best dinner deals for families, and all I can say is thank goodness for coupon books and thank you Urban Cookhouse in Homewood.”
The home’s dining room area already had hardwood floors, and Natalie said she hoped with each layer of linoleum that was lifted from the kitchen, she would see the same hardwoods underneath.
“But nope, that didn’t happen. Under the linoleum, there was just more linoleum,” she said. “But we knew we wanted to extend the hardwoods into the kitchen to tie the whole space together.
The subcontractor did a wonderful job matching the new hardwood floors in the kitchen to the existing hardwoods in the dining room and in the living room.”
When it came to choosing the material for their countertops, Jason said the couple compromised on what they originally envisioned for something that fit better with their budget.
“I liked the idea of a solid surface countertop, and I liked the idea of some of the manmade materials, but just like in any home renovation project, we found that there were things that we could use instead to save some money,” he said. “I think the granite countertops worked out beautifully in the kitchen.”
The granite countertops pick up the neutral color palette that Owens helped the couple choose to replace the bright red walls in the kitchen. The couple stayed with the neutral and natural theme by choosing a warm off-white stone backsplash installed in a brick pattern.
And yes, even the kitchen sink was replaced in the Ferguson home. The single sink was replaced with a stainless steel double sink, complete with a new faucet.
A new stainless steel dishwasher replaced the older white model the couple inherited as the second owners of the home, and now Natalie has a stainless steel gas range, oven and microwave to use when making the family’s meals.
“It’s so much better than that little hotplate,” she said, laughing.
The new, open kitchen is illuminated by plenty of recessed lighting and accented with red pendant lights over the sink and a simple, neutral chandelier over the dining room table.
“We could have never pulled this all together without Kathy’s help,” Natalie said. “She guided us through the whole process when we didn’t even have a clue as to where to start.”
In May of last year, the major renovations in the kitchen were complete, and Natalie rejoiced at being able to cook a meal for her family in their new and improved kitchen.
“The first thing I did was make us eggs for breakfast,” she said. “I was so excited to have the kitchen finished and to be able to get my ‘me time’ back, because that’s what cooking is to me in a lot of ways. It’s nice to be able to have Jason taking care of the kids right here in the kitchen while I’m cooking dinner for us.”
And while the construction part of the project was finished last spring, Natalie and Jason said they took their time choosing the other elements for their newly renovated kitchen.
“We finally picked out a table and the stools for the counter in December,” Natalie said. “We didn’t want to rush and just go out and buy something just to fill the space. We took our time and really looked at what would stand the test of time for us.”
Natalie said she thinks her new kitchen will also stand the test of time well and be the setting for many happy family memories.
“I’m already thinking about how great it will be to have the girls’ birthday parties in the new kitchen,” she said. “Cecily already helps me cook a little, and I’m really looking forward to getting a lot of use out of the kitchen cooking with my daughters as they grow up.”
Now that their kitchen renovation is complete, the couple said they will tackle the next home improvement project on their list–to add an office in the basement for Jason.
And while Jason admitted the couple could have moved to a newer house and avoided a lot of home renovations, he said they have taken the attitude of some of his parents’ friends who live in England.
“They had kids who lived in a 200-year-old former post office–talk about an old house,” Jason said. “But they have a different attitude about it over there and view themselves as the caretakers of the house while they live there. I like that idea.”
