When Kris Rey and Kev Cahill started meeting with architects in 2021 for their house remodel, they had lived in their Chicago bungalow for several years and had a good grasp of its pain points. The main floor was cramped with small rooms. The second floor only had two bedrooms—one for them, and one shared by their two children—but now they had a baby on the way. The basement was a Tiki bar leftover from the 1960s—and although it was admittedly fun for karaoke parties, it wasn’t working for the whole family. “Our daughter was too afraid to go down there,” says Kris.

The couple wanted to open up the main floor, add more bedrooms, and refinish the basement. But the first person that they interviewed didn’t see their vision. “He was like, ‘I’m an architect, not a magician,’” says Kev. Then they met with William Scholtens of Elements Architecture.

The couple shared their wishlist with Sholtens and asked him if the spatial redo was possible while preserving the home’s original charm. “He said, ‘It’s all about making those magic moments,’” recalls Kev—and the couple were thrilled. “He literally said he is going to make magic,” Kris remembers thinking. “He is a magician.”

Before: Front Exterior

After: Front Exterior

Before: Front Room and Stairs

After: Front Room and Stairs

Scholtens remembers how home’s layout became “fragmented” toward the back, and culminated in a step down to a three-season porch that had been added in the ’70s. While it wasn’t conditioned to be living space, it had been converted as such so the couple could enjoy views into the backyard. The question became: “How do I enlarge the space but not lose the cozy feel?” says Scholtens.

Before: Rear Porch

After: Family Room

The answer emerged from two existing arched doorways between the entry foyer, the front room, and the hallway that led into the back of the house. “Those two arches were a really well-loved part of the home,” says Scholtens—and he carried the motif into the common areas, where he added 75 square feet, enlarged the kitchen, and removed walls that made everything feel so cramped.

Now, arches gently demarcate different rooms—the dining area, family room, and kitchen—within the open space. “That softens the rectilinear bungalow and creates these placemaking portals,” says Scholtens.

Take the former rear porch, which is now fully integrated as a family room. It’s tucked behind an arch, and Scholtens added a full-width sliding glass door to a new back porch, which is sheltered by an 800-square-foot upstairs addition that holds a new primary suite and an additional bedroom. In the basement, the team dug down to achieve head clearance, and replaced the tiki bar with an office each for Kris and Kev, a guest room, a full bathroom, mechanicals, and a family room.

Before: Rear Porch

After: Midwest Room

“I call it the Midwest room,” says Scholtens, noting “In Chicago, it’s actually kind of hard to be outside because it’s cold a lot of the times. And then it’s either raining, or it’s just too bloody hot.” The porch offers weather protection, while the glass door enables visual connection to the backyard. Kris and Kev point out that this is the space, other than the kitchen, that they use most frequently, whether watching the snow fall in February, or throwing the doors open come summer.

After: Family Room

After: Backyard

Before: Dining Room

After: Dining Room

To up the cozy factor, Scholtens focused on material moments, like the pine-wrapped family room, a tiled niche for the fireplace, and the tile repeated in the dining room built-in. “They’re visual people,” Scholtens says of Kris and Kev, who both work in the film industry. “They were like, ‘Let’s just do something that’s unique and that’s us.’ They’re very comfortable taking design risks.”

Their adventurous approach is particularly evident in the kitchen, where the couple hired design-build firm Spot Lab, run by Tessa French and Zeb Burge, to create a suite of custom cabinets, after admiring their work on a friend’s geodesic dome on Instagram. The cabinets include a 16-and-a-half-foot-long archway completely outfitted in storage.

The shelves—which hold Kris’s grandmother’s dishware, so it can be quickly grabbed for things like serving birthday cake at kids’ parties—are joined with rounded openable bases, all done up in Kris’s favorite shade of mustard yellow.

Before: Kitchen

After: Kitchen

Additional red oak units have circular cut-out pulls, also outlined in yellow, while the C-shaped wall shelves use chunky red oak buttons to conceal how they’re installed. The firm joined the project after the space had been sheet-rocked, so “going back and trying to do a true floating shelf would’ve been difficult,” says Burge, noting how they created the buttons as “a design feature” instead.

In the dining room built-in, Spot Lab transformed an awkward, narrow space between two cabinets into a colorful wine rack that display bottles on a series of pegs.

The final touch? “For the curved cabinets, each interior is a different color,” says French, who sought to create a sense of surprise—and yes, magic—for the couple to enjoy every day. “They’re not for everybody to see,” says Burge. “They’re like little, happy surprises.”

After: Mudroom

After: Water Fountain

After: Primary Bathroom

More Before & After stories:

They Rebuilt Their Home’s Historic Brick Facade—but the Back Is a Different Story

With an $850K Reno, a Couple Ditched the Suburbs for a Home in the Sky

They Built a Do-It-All Backyard Shed for $281K

Project Credits:

Architecture: Elements Architectural Group / @elementsarchitecturalgroup

Builder: MK Construction, Inc.

Structural Engineer: The Structural Shop

Interior Design: Elements Architectural Group

Cabinetry: Spot Lab

Correction on 3/23/26: The home has a Morsø 6143 B woodburning stove—not a Supreme Novo 18 stove as originally reported.

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Before & After: Their Chicago Bungalow Needed a “Magic” Transformation—and They Pulled Off the Trick