Glistening Gem: Artful, sleek design makes an 18-foot-wide old kitchen more livable
-
Darlene and Derwin Rushing, with daughter Laila, 7, in their renovated Mexican War Streets kitchen. The project, completed in 2007, won first-place in the PG's 2009-10 Renovation Inspiration contest. -
Darlene and Derwin Rushing's kitchen in the Mexican War Streets is as pretty as it is functional. -
A bright-red fireplace is the kitchen's focal point. -
A gas fireplace with a bright-red brick hearth casts a warm glow on the Rushing's kitchen cork floors. A glass back door offers a view of the deck and yard. -
A wall of custom maple cabinets offer pretty display of Darlene Rushing's collection of McCoy and Tierra Negra pottery and art glass. The cracked glass table top at the end of the island (foreground) came from Art Glass Sales in the South Side. -
Shari Lynn Bennett of Magnificent Manufacturing in Allegheny West designed the custom tile backsplash in Darlene and Derwin Rushing's Mexican War Streets kitchen. It depicts tree branches and wooly Truffalo trees. The glass cabinets above display the couple's extensive collection of ceramics and art glass. -
A large wax painting by artist Jennifer Johnston holds court in the Rushing's dining room, which wears the same custom maple cabinetry as the kitchen. The massive marble table came from a store in the West End. -
A center island in the Rushing's renovated kitchen holds an extra-deep apron farmhouse sink. The counters are crafted of Absolute Black granite. -
Laila Rushing, 7, works on the computer in the work space contractor Brian Podgorski created in a nook off the kitchen that's surrounded by windows on three sides. A round table at the end of the counter is made from cracked glass. -
The cork flooring in the Rushing's renovated Mexican War Streets kitchen came from Artemis Environmental in Lawrenceville.
Share with others:
They traveled here in 1987 with high hopes, two Midwestern kids in search of a fun, affordable place to live. Two years previously, "Places Rated Almanac" had dubbed Pittsburgh the most livable city in the U.S. If it was as cool in person as it was on paper, they reasoned, maybe it was time to say adieu to their tiny cottage in northern Michigan.
But Darlene and Derwin Rushing's first impression of the 'Burgh wasn't a good one.
"We hated it," admits Mrs. Rushing, a visual artist who works in glass and fiber. "We were lost all the time. We couldn't wrap our heads around the topography."
They were ready to cut their fact-finding trip a day short when Mrs. Rushing remembered seeing an architectural map of the Mexican War Streets on the wall of their room at The Priory Hotel. Could they just drive through the North Side neighborhood on their way out of town?
Smart move.
"We fell in love with it," she recalls. "It was exactly what we were looking for."
Within three years, they'd quit their jobs, sold their Michigan cottage and in 1990 moved into a recently rehabbed Greek Revival rowhouse on Resaca Place. In 2007, they put their own stamp on it and remodeled the kitchen.
Very smart move -- The Rushings and their kitchen were chosen as the winners of the 2009-10 Renovation Inspiration Contest, small project category (under $50,000). The contest is sponsored by the Post-Gazette and Community Design Center of Pittsburgh.
Reimagined with an open floor plan, a chili-red fireplace and sleek maple cabinetry, the kitchen is a contemporary gem. Yet, it's only 18 feet wide so every inch has to work.
The house, one of the smallest in the neighborhood, was built in the mid-1850s by German-born carpenter Frederick Fleiner. It originally had just two simple rooms. After a fire nearly destroyed the house in 1982, local architect Carl Detwiler rebuilt the space with an open, au courant interior. For the Rushings, East Allegheny architect Robert Baumbach suggested going even further, removing a wall that separated the kitchen from the rest of the first-floor living space.
First Published February 20, 2010 12:00 am
