Alison Victoria's Amazing Kitchen Remodels from HGTV's 'Windy City Rehab'

Windy City Rehab is all about turning timeworn Chicago homes into the neighborhood dazzlers they should be — and making history all over again. Renovation and real estate pro Alison Victoria’s killer kitchens stand at the heart of those makeovers, and we’ve collected the very best here.

By: David L. Haynes and Lauren Oster

Show: Windy City Rehab

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Photo By: Big Table Media

New Recipes for Classic Ingredients

What does the quintessential Chicago-style kitchen look like? Alison Victoria’s so glad you asked. On Windy City Rehab, she combines historic elements and design motifs with contemporary layouts and amenities to suit 21st-century palates — and the spaces she serves up won’t spoil over time. If your own kitchen feels a bit bland, consider this tasting menu of her very best work and re-season to taste.

Heirlooms for Entertaining

Alison demolished an awkward wall between this home’s kitchen and living rooms to create an airy and integrated cooking, gathering and dining space. She installed an expansive island with intricately-carved legs and a gloriously-veined slab of stone, then topped the range with a copper hood that will develop an ever-more-excellent patina as the years go by. Countertop-to-ceiling cabinets create a symmetrical frame for that hood and offer all the storage a host could ever need.

Strategic Play

Tasked with taking this kitchen down to the studs and fulfilling her clients’ dream of checkerboard flooring, Alison delivered a design that’s sophisticated and whimsical all at once. She neatly sidestepped retro kitsch by pairing the graphic treatment with clean and decidedly contemporary finishes like a counter-to-ceiling backsplash of white subway tiles, a sleek and squared-off brass hood and a luxe range with warm hardware.

Opening Move

Once walled off from the sunroom’s priceless natural light, the kitchen’s opposite face now features a high-contrast peninsula with lacquered black cabinetry, brass hardware that complements the range and a built-in microwave. Alison topped the installation with stone that has just a whisper of veining; with plenty of eye candy underfoot, she opted to keep things simple on the counter.

Exploring Every Angle

This elegant kitchen features an angled interior wall that creates an intimate prep space and breakfast nook beyond the dining area. Beyond that wall, the distinctions between this room and the rest of the home’s high-ceilinged, open-plan ground floor are largely visual rather than architectural: a waterfall-edge peninsula extends the countertop, and dark cabinetry and appliances establish contrast within the larger, paler space.

Beauty and the Breakfast Nook

Alison balanced the architectural planes of the kitchen’s cooking area and serving peninsula with a breakfast banquette that feels feminine and generous. Wide channel tufting on the creamy upholstered seat pairs beautifully with the table’s rounded edges and scalloped pedestal, and a trio of traditional Scandinavian wishbone chairs with woven seats complete the vignette’s curvaceous look.

Showcasing the Range

The kitchen’s centerpiece, in turn, is the nook she anchored with a customized, professional-quality BlueStar range, then framed with upper and lower cabinetry that complements its color and sleek bronze hardware. Dramatic marble slabs form a backsplash that adds gravitas and movement to the design, and accessories like a jewel-toned culinary still life, a well-loved bread board, hand-glazed bowls and a vial-filled spice caddy add eclectic warmth.

Art-Deco Elan

Alison referenced the opulence of Chicago’s storied Gold Coast mansions with a graphic backsplash that oozes century-old style. Its inlaid brass-and-marble tiles set the stage for a crisp, matte black range hood with similar brass detailing and carry into the tone she chose for the Shaker-style upper and lower cabinet (elevated with brass hardware, of course). A gooseneck brass faucet in the waterfall-edge island extends the warm metallic theme even more; it culminates in barstools with angled mesh that calls back to that tilework behind the range. Nifty, no?

Service With Style

Circling the island showcases even more detail: on this side, the island reveals the farmhouse sink’s ridged apron front and a wine refrigerator tucked into that Shaker-style cabinetry. Warm, narrow hardwood floorboards create a delicate herringbone design that carries into the cozy, light-filled sitting area beside the apartment’s fireplace — the perfect spot to enjoy the contents of that wine fridge.

Soaring New Ceiling

A drop ceiling smothered this kitchen’s upper reaches until Alison peeled back ill-advised “updates” to reveal its far grander architecture (and emphasize those lines with both exposed beams and a ceiling-mounted range hood that echoes their shape). Floor-to-ceiling white subway tile and cabinetry let those overhead beams draw the eye, and layered lighting design with recessed, pendant, sconce and under-cabinet fixtures give the space an all-encompassing glow.

Did We Mention the Island?

Beneath those beams, a waterfall-edge honey-walnut-toned butcher block island contrasts beautifully with both the white cabinetry beside and beneath it and the grand green hutch between the kitchen and the dining room. A casual dining spot that accommodates five barstools on its far side, this industrious island boasts a wine refrigerator, storage and a microwave here beside the range.

Industrial Accents

For this kitchen, in turn, Alison opted for darker cabinetry with matte black cabinet hardware and sconces that pairs with a moody island and a flared range hood that almost looks shingled, thanks to overlapping layers of material. That cabinetry both complements the floor-to-ceiling fireplace surround in the sitting area beyond the kitchen and creates a frame for a very urban feature: windows flanking the range double as display areas, thanks to inset glass shelves, and showcase the weathered exterior brick on a neighboring building.

Establishing Patterns

This view further demonstrates Alison’s penchant for outfitting kitchens with finishes that develop as motifs throughout the homes she renovates. Here, the island’s deep tone picks up on the risers carrying up the staircase — and the Shaker-style cabinets beneath them echo those flanking the range. Sconces on the landing, in turn, match the two Alison installed above those endlessly cool window/displays above the countertops.

Spectacular Salvage

Let’s pause at this point in our appreciation of Alison’s kitchen-construction chops to really sit with how serendipitous it was for her to have a wide, magnificent, weathered mantel on hand as she was planning out this particular kitchen. It provides a ledge for decorative objects that don’t clutter the counters beneath it, complements the rustic wood she used for the island and contrasts handsomely with the dark stain she chose for the home’s new floorboards.

Even More Mantel

We mean it: this repurposed mantel calls for extended meditation. Installed here, it lends the space the gravitas of a much older and more traditional kitchen, where an inset hearth would function as the principal cooking area (though in this case, Alison installed a modern exhaust system, created contemporary nooks for gourmet supplies and used inset task lighting to dramatize the pale stone she chose for a backsplash). This is the next-level synthesis you nail when, as she’s estimated, you’ve renovated hundreds of kitchens.

Dimensional Minimalism

In this neutral, contemporary beauty, Alison stepped away from historic fixtures and extroverted opulence to deliver luxury that murmurs in visitors’ ears. Barely-there hardware and fixtureless drawers combine with recessed lighting and an invisibly-emphasized tray ceiling to create a warm, expansive entertaining space with an atmosphere you feel rather than see.

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