Creating Beautiful Spaces | Heart & Home Design Co.
Photos by JENNIFER GOETZ
To many, the kitchen is a sacred place in one’s house. It’s one of the most well-traveled rooms in the home, and it’s where many joyous occasions occur. Food — the life essential — is prepared, and vital communication is shared. It’s one place families find comfort whenever they’re home. Smells can instantly bring back memories of wondrous meals prepared in the kitchen with loved ones.
That’s why designers Cyndi Haines and Jessica Horton of Heart & Home Design Co. love creating beautiful kitchens for her clients.
Heart & Home has been in business nearly six years, crafting cabinetry, countertops and kitchen designs for families in Topeka, Lawrence, Manhattan, Kansas City and the surrounding area.
“Creativity is at the heart of projects we complete,” Haines said. “Not just from the look of a project, but we spend a lot of time listening to how families use their kitchens. We want to imagine solutions to every problem or annoyance people have experienced in past kitchens and provide thoughtful solutions.”
THE REWARDS OF DESIGN
This is exactly the approach they took for clients Rich and Lisa Tarwater. Having worked with them before to design the kitchen cabinets in their former home in Westboro, they were honored to be asked to design the cabinetry for their new construction home.
Previously, they had to work within the existing space and architecture of their historic home, Haines said.
“With the new build, the Tarwaters were thrilled to have a blank slate to show more of their personality and style when designing their spaces,” Haines said. “It is so rewarding to eventually start seeing things come to fruition after months of creative and thoughtful team planning. There is also no higher compliment than for previous clients to choose you to design for them again. I feel like many of our clients become friends by the end. I’m always a little sad when a project wraps up. But in this particular project, it really was a labor of love helping Rich and Lisa design the special cabinet and countertop details in each space.”
KITCHENS & CONNECTIONS
Heart & Home has a beautiful showroom that Haines personally renovated in Brookwood Shopping Center, 2827 SW 29th Street. It is open by appointment. Haines said they love sharing their space with their clients as well as the community through events and monthly cooking classes.
While Heart & Home also creates custom bathrooms and closets, Haines’ favorite home project is and always has been the kitchen.
“It is where our families spend the most time,” she said. “You have so many opportunities to actually make people’s lives easier, to keep families healthier and to influence the connections that people are making with their friends and family.”
Currently, Haines and her team are doing their first whole home project. It is an ADA-compliant property, which has allowed Haines and her team to put extra care into every decision they have made.
“It has taken thoughtful design to the next level for us,” she said.
Haines said her team strives to design such an array of kitchens that you only know it is theirs by the quality. The end goal is to have their designs elevate their customers’ style, she said, adding their hope is to not get labeled with a specific type of design.
“We want to know our clients on a personal level to design solutions that transform how they live their lives,” Haines said. “Our product is craftsmanship at its finest, unmatched at every level. Our partners have one level of product, and we provide that superior craftsmanship on every job.
While house projects are the bread and butter for Heart & Home, Haines said a pie-in-the-sky project for her would be a boathouse — “the ultimate challenge to maximize space, comfort and functionality.”
DESIGN EVOLVES
Haines said remodels can be much more difficult than starting from scratch because there is reconfiguring and dealing with the uncertainty of how much you can change a space, but also, there is nothing better than the payoff of watching the process unfold.
“We are constant students researching trends and capabilities of products. Think about how far technology has come in the last five years with whole-home smart systems,” said Haines of the devices that allow you to do things like control appliances remotely and give you greater control of your energy use, all while automating functions like adjusting temperature, turning on and off lights, and opening and closing window treatments. “We have no idea what will be used in the future, and that is exciting.”
Want to make your kitchen the beautiful space you’ve always dreamed it to be?
“We are looking to work with those individuals who geek out on the craftsmanship and details as much as we do,” Haines said. “We could spend all day talking about the lessons we have learned through our friends, families and clients’ kitchen horror stories. The kitchen really is the heart of your home, and there is no better place to take time to find solutions to the things that keep you out of the kitchen. We’d like to show you a bit about what we can do to make your life easier.
