Before & After: This Builder-Basic Kitchen Goes Glam with a Marble Makeover

While she works in fashion public relations by day, Rebecca Raskind is no stranger to a renovation project. Alongside her photographer husband, Jared, she is a home-flipping extraordinaire, recently selling a 1960s mid-century fixer upper for $2.5 million. But when it came to her own home in Glendale — a 3,000-square-foot four-bedroom, four-bathroom house they moved into in 2018 — the kitchen was a major eyesore.

Raskind decided on a total gut, removing the non-structural wall once blocking off the kitchen to make it feel more open, raising the ceiling height to match the vaulted ceilings in the dining and living rooms and finally closing up the wall of windows to allow for the newly placed range and backsplash.

“We had to keep some of the beams in place, but we ended up liking the look,” she says. “We then stained them to match the other exposed beams in the house.”

To brighten up the room, Raskind went with a black-and-white Bianco Venato marble island and backsplash, adding a sense of luxury in line with her self-described California Eclectic style.

 “Plus, we needed to fabricate an island to fit around some of the original beams,” she says. 

To match the clean look of the island, Raskind went with IKEA glossy white upper cabinetry and Semihandmade black doors on the lower cabinets, a choice which not only saved on costs, but also allowed for total customization. 

The fridge and dishwasher are KitchenAid and the range is Cosmo Kitchen Products. Raskind sourced the bar stools and light fixtures from West Elm, while the grey-and-white rug she snagged on Overstock. The Billie Holiday painting, which adds a splash of color to the neutral kitchen, was a gift from a family friend. 

Overall, the renovation took three months and was definitely a learning experience. 

“It was difficult figuring out to remove that ceiling and walls and figure out what structural beams would need to stay in place,” she says. “We hoped that would end up aesthetically pleasing and luckily it turned out.”

This post originally ran on Apartment Therapy. See it there: Before & After: This Drab Kitchen Goes Glam with a Marble Makeover