Where Life Happens: Explore Marianna's Chicago Kitchen Renovation With Moen

THE STORY

A Kitchen That Earns Its Place

For Marianna and her husband Tim, the kitchen has always been more than a place to cook. It's where their two young children land after school, where guests inevitably congregate no matter how many other rooms the party was supposed to fill, where the family parrot Pablo gets his weekly bath in the sink. It is, without question, the center of everything.

So when the time came to renovate the outdated kitchen in their Chicago condo, the stakes felt high. The couple had a clear vision for their kitchen renovation checklist — a bold color palette, materials with character, a layout that would actually serve how they live — and they were willing to make strong choices to get there. The result is a kitchen that manages to feel both tailored and timeless: red lower cabinets against crisp white uppers, Calacatta Viola marble that pulls warm color from the stone itself, a handsome checkerboard cement tile floor, and a breakfast nook that has become the family's unofficial headquarters.

We sat down with Marianna to talk through the decisions that shaped the space — the ones she'd make again in a heartbeat, the one she'd revisit, and the single moment that made it all feel like home.

DESIGN DECISIONS

The Case for Going All the Way

Marianna had a vision for the kitchen's palette from the beginning. Red lower cabinets. White uppers. A marble that would knit the two together rather than simply divide them. She found that material in the Calacatta Viola, a stone that carries threads of red and lavender through its white ground, making it feel less like a neutral backdrop and more like a deliberate choice.

"It's a really great transitional material," she says. "The marble incorporates the red, so it ties everything together." Taking the marble all the way up the backsplash (something Tim pushed for and Marianna initially resisted) turned out to be one of the renovation's best decisions. "I was originally just going to do countertops and maybe a four-inch border to save money," she says. "But I think it was absolutely the right call to take it all the way up."

"Everyone always gathers in the kitchen. No matter how much seating I have everywhere else in the house, everybody ends up right here." — Marianna

The checkerboard floor with cement tile in a bold red-and-white pattern adds the kind of graphic personality that anchors a room. Marianna rates it 9 out of 10, docking a point for the maintenance demands that come with cement tile, and noting that in an older building, a few cracks have already begun to appear. But she wouldn't trade it. "It adds so much character," she says. "It's personality you can't get from a standard floor."

And then there's the drying rack above the sink — a custom-fitted piece that the couple assembled themselves because nothing on the market quite fit. Dishes go up to dry and drip back down into the sink. Counter space stays clear. "It's a bit of a rigged-together piece," Marianna admits with a laugh, "but we love it."

THE HEART OF IT ALL

Everything Centers Around the Sink

Ask Tim where the kitchen renovation feels most right to him, and he doesn't hesitate: the sink. "I spend a lot of time cleaning and resetting for the next day," he says. "Before, it wasn't so pleasant because it was an older kitchen. But now that it's completely redone, you actually want to be in here. It's enjoyable."

For a family with two young children, the kitchen sink is a high-traffic workhorse for flower cutting, vegetable washing, Pablo the parrot's bath, and the daily ritual of kids washing hands the moment they walk through the back door. It needed to perform.

The Heart of It All

Marianna had originally chosen a matte black kitchen faucet to echo the dark hardware throughout the kitchen and pull the deeper tones out of the marble. But standing in the finished space, she realized it was competing too much with the stone. She switched to the Inara Pulldown Kitchen Faucet in Spot Resist™ Stainless and found it worked better in every direction. "It's its own unique piece," she says. "I love the height, I love the pull-down, and it doesn't distract from the marble — it actually works with it." The stainless finish also matches the appliances, a bonus she hadn't planned for but came to appreciate. The Reflex pulldown faucet has a satisfying weight, snaps back easily, and the Spot Resist finish stays clean and fingerprint-free, which is a must-have in a household with small children. She rates it 10 out of 10.

HOW THEY LIVE

Rituals at the Ready

Marianna's mornings start in two rooms at once. The kitchen claims the first move — she and Tim head straight for the espresso machine, making sure the water is fresh before anything else happens. But the real morning choreography unfolds in the bathroom. Her daughter's curly hair needs to be fully soaked before it can be brushed through and styled. Her son gets a spray-down. Marianna herself splashes cold water on her face; a small, bracing ritual she's come to depend on. "It gives me that jolt awake," she says.

That bathroom is more than a utility space. Marianna and Tim have filled it with curated art that tells the story of their relationship, including pieces collected together and images that carry meaning. The Gibson Chrome Centerset Bathroom Faucet anchors the room with its own quiet confidence, a deliberate contrast to the Inara in the kitchen. Different collections, different finishes, but the same instinct: choose something with personality that belongs to the room it's in.

The afternoon rhythm shifts back to the kitchen. The kids come in through the back door, wash their hands, grab a snack, and settle in at the breakfast table. Her father-in-law visits and gravitates to the same spot. Friends come over and end up there too, sitting around the table while Marianna stands at the stove or pours drinks at the counter. "Even though I have basically two living rooms and a dining room," she says, "the kitchen is where we hang out by far the most."

The breakfast nook was a deliberate choice that has paid off in exactly the way she hoped. What was once a countertop-height seating strip along one wall became a full café-style dining table with a proper bench. "The kids sit here all day every day," she says. "It becomes the center of the party. Everyone always gathers in the kitchen."

THE MOMENT IT BECAME HOME

When the Water Came Back On

Marianna and Tim lived through their renovation while still in the condo. No kitchen sink for weeks. Coffee cups washed in the bathroom. The whole choreography of daily life disrupted and compressed into spaces that weren't designed for it.

"Doing a kitchen renovation while living at home — there's no running water, no kitchen sink," Marianna says. "Washing even your coffee cups in the bathroom sink gets really tiring after even a few days." The moment the water came back on in the new kitchen, everything shifted. "That's when we knew it was complete," she says. "We could use everything, and it was just like moving in."

The turn of a valve is a simple threshold, but it captures something true about how we experience our homes. Design and materials and lighting and layout all matter enormously. But a kitchen without running water isn't a kitchen. Water is what makes the space functional, yes. But it's also what makes it feel alive.

"The sound of water is really the sound of life in my house," Marianna says. "It's movement and energy and everything that's happening. I love my house full of people, and the sound of water is that constant reminder that life is always in motion."