For those who believe in divine providence, Jean Stoffer’s rise to prominence in the world of kitchen design might look like a wonderful part of a higher plan. The River Forest resident seems both amazed and grateful when she recalls how her kitchen and bath design business began in early 1995.
Stoffer had decided to take some time off from doing interior design work shortly after her third child was born. A few years and another baby later, a past client building a home on the newly available lots near the Dominican Priory in River Forest approached Stoffer. Would she be willing to design the kitchen?
“I took on the job”and it turned out great. I couldn’t believe it,” Stoffer said.
When a good friend of that client purchased the lot next door, Stoffer got a second request. Afterward, the home was chosen as the Oak Park and River Forest Infant Welfare Society ASID Showcase House.
“I was pretty much launched,” Stoffer said. “It was like a gift.”
Stoffer built her business from there, through word of mouth, events like Parenthesis’ annual Kitchen Walk, and more recent recognition in national magazines and a prominent national contest.
Where once Stoffer handled some two to three projects at a time, she now juggles 20 or 30, in various stages of design and completion.
While she doesn’t manage construction, she does advise clients on the selection of contractors and ensures that every element of her design is realized as envisioned. She also supplies custom cabinetry through a longstanding contact in central Illinois, and discounts her design fees toward the purchase of cabinets. (Stoffer’s fees range from $2,500 to $5,000 and higher.)
“Our service goes until the last knob is in place,” she said.
The “our” in Stoffer’s business now includes her husband, Dale, who joined Jean Stoffer Design in January of this year to help his wife handle her burgeoning client list. “The first order of business was computerizing the books,” he noted.
“A lot of the detail work was all in my head,” explained Jean. “It was getting crowded up there!”
The Stoffers recently celebrated their 23rd anniversary. They met at Oral Roberts University, in Oklahoma, where Jean was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business and Dale was completing an MBA. Both had grown up in the Chicago area”Jean in River Forest”and the couple settled here after getting married.
Jean started her career in real estate, later joined the interior design business of Donna Aylesworth (formerly based in Oak Park), and eventually launched her own business in interior design. Dale spent some 15 years in industrial sales to the automotive industry.
“We needed someone to be committed to the business in the long haul,” said Jean, explaining the couple’s more recent decision to work together.
Involving Dale also meant not bringing an outside employee into their home. The Stoffer kitchen essentially serves as a showroom, and another room in the basement is stocked with sample materials. “We have a lot going on here,” she said.
The goings-on include the comings and goings of the Stoffers’ four children, now 10, 13, 17 and 19. The oldest is currently in Amsterdam, doing mission work for a year before starting college. Stoffer has always managed her business around her kids.
“I did really try to work around their schedules, because they’re actually more important to me,” she said. Even now, she tries to shut down by 3:30 p.m. each day. While the kids are in school, the work is “intense.”
When asked how she and Dale have adjusted to working together on a daily basis, she references the start of their marriage. “This was another adjustment,” she said, smiling. “Dale is very patient with me. I am working on that quality myself.”
Her husband also has an appreciation for his wife’s talents. “She’s got a gift of spatial integration, being able to see beyond what’s there,” he explained.
“I can actually see the room done with all of the materials,” his wife agreed.
An eye for architecture
Stoffer emphasized that she designs for each client’s unique style and has worked on kitchens (and baths) ranging from the streamlined to the ornate. “It’s what you want,” she said.
She doesn’t like labels, though her website uses a few to organize project photos, such as “European Eclecticism,” and “Inspired by the Hamptons.” One common driver of her designs is the desire to make a space that doesn’t look brand new.
“The way we love to design is to bring in different elements into the room, so it looks like a space that has happened over time,” she said. “It particularly works in older homes.”
Stoffer pointed out that this approach mirrors the way homeowners accumulate furnishings. “They get this piece handed down to them, and this piece at an estate sale,” she explained.
Stoffer said today’s kitchens are increasingly the focal point of the house. Designs need to provide places where people can not only cook, but check e-mail, do homework, pay bills or sit down with a book. “Appliances manufacturers are making it possible for kitchens to look like a family room. I can make the pieces look like furniture,” she said.
Stoffer gets many of her ideas from observing architecture and old building materials. She recalled a recent inspiration outside the Brown Cow ice cream parlor in Forest Park. While waiting for her son, who works there, she noticed the wooden doors across the street on a funeral home. Their details appealed to Stoffer and felt right for a current project.
“I drew it in the drawing,” she said. “I asked my client to drive by the funeral home.” The door design became an element for the panel on that client’s refrigerator.
When Stoffer redid her own kitchen two-and-a-half years ago, she found the perfect place for a large, leaded glass window she’d long been admiring at a shop on Madison Street. The window now sits between countertop and upper cabinetry on the south wall of her butler’s pantry, providing both light and historic flair.
A nearby client had a passion for Eastlake furniture, from the late Victorian period. Stoffer found an old bed in the style and used the headboard and footboard to make the client’s new range hood look like an Eastlake antique.
Making history
One of Stoffer’s more unusual projects paired her with homeowner Kelli Kline, who had been restoring her Oak Park Victorian with her husband, Tom. Stoffer’s charge was to create a kitchen that looked as if it had always been there.
The period reproduction kitchen earned Stoffer regional recognition in the Sub-Zero and Wolf 2000/2001 Kitchen Design Contest, a biannual event judged by top designers in the nation. “In the industry, it’s the big dog,” Stoffer said.
Stoffer’s design for a Craftsman-style home in Oak Park, incorporating white-painted cabinetry with ebony-stained walnut pieces, won national honors in the 2002/2003 contest. The contest winnowed nearly 1,000 applicants to identify 50 regional winners and subsequently, three national picks.
At the final judging event in Scottsdale, Ariz., a member of the family that owns Sub-Zero took particular note of Stoffer’s work. That admirer asked Stoffer to design a period kitchen, like the one she had done for the Klines, for an old schoolhouse being converted to shops near Madison, Wis.
Stoffer’s designs have been featured in Old House Interiors, Victorian Home, and House Beautiful Kitchens & Baths magazines. Forthcoming issues of Home and House Beautiful Kitchens & Baths will also highlight Stoffer’s work. Her own kitchen graces the cover of a new book, Design Ideas for the Kitchen.
Manipulating space is typically each project’s biggest challenge. “There’s usually not enough space, or it’s laid out wrong,” she noted. Finding the perfect solution is Stoffer’s passion, and she typically focuses in on just one to discuss with the client.
“My most used tool is an eraser,” she quips, describing the work she does before arriving at that perfect solution. She then coaches clients through the details of materials selection, helping them understand the myriad possibilities and then narrow the choices.
“There are so many neat things out there, so many awesome materials,” Stoffer said.
She’s currently finishing a kitchen project in River Forest with four different countertop materials, one of which is pewter. “We found this factory in France, and we are working directly with them,” she said, noting that no one in the U.S. is making similar surfaces. “It’s dramatic.”
High-end projects are typical for Stoffer, though she has worked on a kitchen with a budget as “low” as $50,000. (“She already had her Sub-Zero refrigerator,” Stoffer added.)
She admits that premium appliances are pricey but finds that the quality merits the investment. For example, in a true European convection oven, a cook can put fish and a lemon souffle in the same space without any transfer of aroma.
In the Stoffer kitchen, Dale specializes in breakfast and Jean particularly enjoys cooking for company.
Day to day, though, their reality may be similar to that of many parents and clients: “We have to cook because we have all these kids,” Jean said.