Pasadena Kitchen Remodel: From Mirrored Walls to an Island Kitchen

The original kitchen in this Pasadena home sat behind a mirrored wall, next to a sunken living room, with dark cabinets and a chandelier from another era. The owners wanted a light, open kitchen with a real island.

Project at a glance

Location	Pasadena, CA
Project type	Full kitchen remodel
Scope	Demolition to framing, wall reconfiguration, drywall, paint, new cabinets and island, quartz counters, appliances, pendant lighting, flooring, plantation shutters

Before

Mirrored wall panels, a half-wall down to the sunken living room, and a kitchen you could not see from the rest of the house.

Down to the framing

Everything came out: mirrors, drywall, cabinets, the old soffits. The photos show the framing exposed and the new window openings, then the drywall and paint stage with the recessed lighting already in place.

Cabinets, then counters

White shaker cabinets went in first, then the island base in a darker grey, then the counters were templated and installed. The island took three pendant lights and a row of stools; the range wall got a full-height cabinet run with a built-in microwave.

The result

A kitchen that is open to the living room and full of daylight through the new shutters, with the island as the working center of the house.

Putting a sink in the middle of a room

An island sink is the request that turns a cosmetic kitchen remodel into a construction project, because drainage does not travel horizontally on its own. Waste has to fall, and it has to be vented, and neither of those things exists in the middle of a floor until somebody puts them there.

• The drain has to fall from the island to an existing line at a consistent slope. On a raised floor that runs between the joists. On a slab it means cutting a trench in concrete, laying pipe, and patching — which is the single biggest cost difference between two otherwise identical island kitchens.
• It has to be vented. An unvented trap siphons and stops holding its water seal, which is what lets sewer gas into a room. In the middle of a floor there is no wall to run a vent up, so the usual solution is an island (loop) vent, detailed in a specific way that a plans examiner will look for.
• Everything is decided before the slab is patched. Once the concrete closes, the sink position is fixed. Marking the true cabinet layout on the floor before anything is cut is worth the hour it takes.

Mirrored walls, and what was behind them

Mirrored walls were a mainstay of Southern Californian kitchens and dining rooms for a decade, for a rational reason: they made small, dark, closed-off rooms feel larger. They were an optical answer to an architectural problem.

The architectural answer is to open the room, which is what happened here. What is worth knowing is that mirror was usually installed with mastic directly onto drywall, and removing it takes the paper surface with it. Budget for skim-coating or re-boarding the wall — a mirrored wall is never simply a wall you can paint once the glass is off.

Lighting a kitchen with no exterior wall

Interior kitchens in older Pasadena houses often have one small window or none. Once a wall comes out and the room joins the space next door, the lighting problem changes: the kitchen is now borrowing daylight from another room, and it needs artificial light that does not read as a bright box next to a dim one.

In practice that means dimmable layers on separate switching — ambient, task under the cabinets, and something low and warm for the evening — and matching colour temperature across every fixture in the connected space. Mixed colour temperature is the most common reason a newly opened room feels subtly wrong and nobody can say why.

Before, during and after

Related: Kitchen remodeling · Remodeling in Pasadena · Kitchen remodel cost guide

Permits for a kitchen island in Pasadena

Pasadena runs its own building department rather than LADBS, and a kitchen remodel that moves plumbing, gas or circuits is permitted and inspected there. An island adds a plumbing and electrical run through the floor or slab plus the receptacles the code requires in the island itself, which is why the layout is fixed before demolition. Our kitchen remodel permit guide covers the trigger points, our Pasadena page covers what we do in the city, and kitchen remodeling describes the full service.

Questions about island kitchens

Can I have a sink in the island?

Usually yes, and the honest question is what it costs on your particular floor. On a raised floor it is routine. On a slab it means cutting concrete for the drain and the vent, and that should be priced explicitly rather than assumed.

What about a hob in the island instead?

Simpler for drainage and harder for ventilation. A hood over an island is either a suspended chimney hood, which is a visual feature whether or not you wanted one, or a downdraft, which is less effective. And you lose the counter space around the hob to safe clearance.

How big does a room have to be for an island?

The room has to hold the island plus real circulation on every side that gets used — roughly a metre of walkway. Islands are frequently squeezed into rooms that cannot take them, and the result is a kitchen that is harder to work in than the one it replaced. A peninsula is often the better answer in a narrow room, and nobody ever asks for one.

Do I need a permit to open the wall between the kitchen and dining room?

If the wall is structural, certainly — that is engineered, permitted and inspected work. If it is a partition, it depends on what is inside it: plumbing vents and electrical still have to be dealt with properly. Either way the plumbing and electrical alterations that come with a kitchen of this scope are permitted work.

More kitchen remodeling work, the kitchen remodel permit guide, and our Pasadena service area page.

Thinking about a similar project?

Planning a kitchen remodel in Pasadena? We start with a site visit of about two hours and send a written proposal within 48 hours. Green Design and Build is a licensed residential general contractor (CSLB #1110975) based in Van Nuys. We reply within one business day. Read our guide to kitchen remodeling in Pasadena for local costs, permits and timelines.