A lasting friendship helps shape an Overland Park family home—where clean lines, warmth, and personality come together with style.

Words
Andrea Darr

Photos
Josie Benefield
@josiedell_photo

Designer/Contractor
Amanda Lee Interiors
@amandaleeinteriors

Designer
Kurt Knapstein
@knapsteindesign

Cabinet Design and Build
Bootlace Design & Build
@bootlacedesignbuild

ometimes having a lot of space and an open floor plan is just as much of a challenge to design as a space with less square footage.

That was precisely the challenge for this project team, comprising Ryan Comment of Bootlace Design & Build, contractor Amanda Adams of Amanda Lee Interiors and designer Kurt Knapstein, who had to figure out a solution so simple and elegant that one wonders how there was ever a challenge at all.

“Architecturally, I pushed for it to be open and connected,” Comment says. “The traffic flow works for daily life and parties.”

The major culprit of the holdup was a stud pack positioned within feet of the garage entry door. An immovable component, the team had to design around it.

Adams found inspo pics to show the homeowners how they could create a freestanding bar that could double as a drop zone when they enter the house.

As the general contractor and a designer, Adams approaches each project with an intuitive eye and natural confidence.

“I’m always learning, but I’m highly detailed and on top of it,” she says.

It also helps when the client is “super easy to work with,” she adds.

The team spent a full two days laying out the cabinets, then fine-tuned so tightly that the plan didn’t deviate from then on.

“When you have a good team, it doesn’t take long,” Adams says.

The client gave them one direction for the aesthetics: warm and white.

Comment was on top of that with his highly custom cabinet-building company. He spends lots of time with his clients, asking what worked well and what didn’t in their previous homes. He also goes through material options and provides samples.

In this case, the clear answer was walnut. Dark, grain-matched veneer fronts make an incredible statement in their modern, streamlined precision.

The effect is also grounding, as one can appreciate the natural beauty as well as the craftsmanship behind the cuts, which all come from one tree.

“We made sure there was consistency everywhere,” Comment notes.

Two of the fronts open up and slide back into pockets to reveal a coffee bar and an appliance garage. Double Gaggenau ovens also slide into place in perfect alignment.

For the ceiling-height upper cabinets on the perimeter, they went with white.

The window wall has a quartzite countertop and full-height backsplash, but for the range wall, something more unexpected: mirrors.

With the extra-large double slab of quartzite commanding the island top, the mirrors offer a lighter alternative to the visually heavier stone.

Another imaginative element is the island’s steel leg on the cantilevered seating side. The black powder-coated metal oval-shaped cutout is a sculptural form that seems to allude to the client’s exceptional art collection—another punctuation mark in a sophisticated home with a story to tell.

The team spent considerable time on this job to make it look effortless.

“We put together a really great project,” Adams says.