How to Build the Kitchen You’ll Never Leave

Lauren Tamraz and Eric Judson’s Gardiner Beach House

by Jennifer Farley and photographs by Amber C. McPhail, April 28, 2011

She’s an artist and poet who teaches composition at the Culinary Institute of America; he’s a biker and journeyman lineman who gets dispatched for emergency power repair whenever and wherever there’s a major storm. They met cute, of course—walking their dogs—but the last thing they wanted was a sugar-sweet country kitchen for their radically renovated 1954 Sears kit house in the Ireland Corners section of Gardiner.

Meet Lauren Tamraz, 29, and Eric Judson, 34, together nine years and married for five; she’s the daughter of an artist who grew up in an eight-floor walk-up apartment in Yonkers sharing a bathroom with three sisters; he’s the son of a Smithtown, Long Island, cop-turned-bank-security-director who loves motorcycles, sports, and anything mechanical.

Bought in 2007 from the builders’ son, the Tamraz/Judson home has undergone a massive renovation which included raising the roof pitch, lending a loftlike feel to the 13-by-13 foot kitchen area, now the heart of eclectically updated dwelling. The last and largest project, the kitchen redo, took 14 months and cost $30,000 to complete.

“Lauren loves to cook and entertain, and the idea was to have a Hamptons beach house kitchen in the country,” says general contractor and fellow Gardiner resident Chris Stelmaszyk, 34, one of the couple’s closest friends. “I’ve never seen another house that looks like theirs, and as an added bonus I get to see and feel out how comfortable it is for them.”

Stelmaszyk says the kitchen—a showpiece for him—has also become the gathering place for an ever-expanding group of friends and family, who include the seller’s Uncle Don, the couple’s next-door neighbor; people who have worked on the property; classmates from SUNY New Paltz, (Chris, Lauren, and Eric’s alma mater); and lately contributors to Awosting Alchemy, a literary webzine Lauren launched and edits.