There was once a wall in the Urquharts’ kitchen, but they fixed that problem with a $12 sledgehammer and a $4 crowbar. “We did the demolition ourselves,” Selena Urquhart explains. Photo by Jeanine Michna-Bales
Selena built the L-shaped corner booth. She also built the table, which uses the cast iron legs of a Singer sewing machine and a slab of leftover marble for the tabletop. Photo by Jeanine Michna-Bales
If Pinterest were an actual place, it might look something like Selena and Alun Urquhart’s home in Vickery Place, and Selena would be its queen.
Selena was doing it herself before DIY was a household term, way back when artist pin boards were actual boards — although she’d be the last to complain about the new social media invention.
“I love Pinterest,” she says.
When the Urquharts moved into their home, the kitchen was significantly smaller — a problem they fixed with the help of a $12 sledgehammer and a $4 crowbar.
“We did the demolition ourselves,” Selena says. “We did have a contractor come out to make sure it wasn’t a supporting wall, and it wasn’t, so we lucked out with that.”
She knew to look out for electrical and gas lines, thanks to the home improvement TV shows.
“I guess I’d just seen a lot of HGTV,” Selena muses. “So I bought a sledgehammer and went to town.”
Alun, who’s from Scotland and loves to cook, insisted the couple needed an Aga stove, which is a large British-made, handcrafted stove that’s a very unusual size and shape, so they constructed the kitchen island around it.
In the corner of the kitchen is an eating area that’s built into the wall. Selena built the L-shaped booth seating and sewed checkered cushions for the seats. She also made several throw pillows.
She made the kitchen table using the cast iron legs of an antique Singer sewing machine. She removed the pedal, but the base still displays the Singer name. For the tabletop, she used a slab of leftover marble a friend found in her backyard. Luckily Selena already had a rocksaw from the kitchen counter project to cut the marble to size.
She painted the base of the island and the kitchen door with blackboard paint so her nieces and nephews can doodle on it with chalk.
And that’s just the kitchen.
The Urquharts’ office/media room features a remixed Ikea bookshelf Selena took apart one rainy day and put back together inside the wall. And the living room includes several handcrafted items Selena made at the Creative Arts Center in East Dallas.
When she’s not creating arts and crafts with her own hands, she’s traveling the world with Alun and collecting them — usually bringing them back in her carry-on luggage.
“Alun finally made a rule, ‘If you can’t carry it, you can’t have it,’ ” Selena says, laughing. “But of course the flipside of that is: If I can carry it, I can have it.”
