Fountain Homes In The News

The Northern Virginia Daily Kitchen Kapers Tour to highlight gourmet settings, raise funds
By Josette Keelor
Daily Staff Writer

Kitchen Kapers, Tour to Highlight Gourmet Settings, Raise Funds
By Josette Keelor
Daily Staff Writer

Lori Fountain of Winchester is making the final preparations to spotlight the stylized kitchen in her new house, which Fountain Homes built to look old.

With its hand-crafted Mexican floor tiles and stone-covered hood over the range, the kitchen draws in the eye from every direction. A wine-tasting even with Terra Cotta Kitchen seems like the natural type of setting through which to showcase the kitchen.

The Fountain kitchen will be one stop along the seventh annual Kitchen Kapers Tour, which will take place on Sunday, from noon to 4 p.m. The Winchester branch of the Quota Club will sponsor the event, which will raise money for Faith in Action of Winchester and Frederick County, a local organization that assists people who have debilitating illnesses that prevent them from being able to take public transportation or drive themselves around town.

Joyce Mull, co-chairwoman for the event and treasurer of Quota, explains that the fundraiser began seven years ago, when a former member introduced the idea, having heard about another organization facilitating a similar event. Since 2000, the event has become well known in Frederick County and has been successful in its cause, says Mull.

“We’re just real proud of it,” she says, explaining that the event pulls in about $20,000 to $30,000 a year.

Quota’s Website describes Faith in Action as a program that “brings together people of different faiths to help their neighbors in need.”

Besides raising money for the needy, the event provides a fun and educational experience for all involved. As visitors enjoy touring kitchens around Winchester and Frederick County, they will be able to sample food from local vendors and gain ideas for improving their own kitchens.

Fountain designed her dream home to look like a historic house. She says that although the house is only a couple of months old, people have already asked her if it is a new home or if it has been there for a long time.

Judging from the house’s façade, it is difficult to tell how old it is, and Fountain is pleased with that result.

“I put thousands of hours into this,” she says. “I will stay here until I can’t climb stairs anymore.”

After collaborating on the design process with local architect R. Hunter Hurt, Fountain oversaw the building of the house with her eight-year-old company, Fountain Homes.

She designed the house to have an indoor/outdoor feel to it, including in the blueprints five sets of French doors. Sunlight floods the kitchen through the many windows which look out on the wraparound porch, the historic iron fence in the neighboring yard and the ancient tulip poplar tree on the front lawn. Adding to the natural feeling of the kitchen are the Mexican tiles stretching the length of the kitchen and butler’s pantry. The handmade tiles show the imperfections that occur when tile makers lay their day’s work out to dry- paw prints adorn a tile here and there throughout the kitchen, where a dog or a chicken in the street trod over the tiles that lay in the sun drying. The tiles are even self-heating, drawing their warmth from water tubes under the floor. Fountain says that she never enjoyed tile floors before, because they are cold; she does not have that problem anymore,

The kitchen offers a butler’s pantry with a sink and its own dishwasher. One of her main reasons for designing the kitchen and the rest of the house in the way that she did was so that she can entertain a crowd of friends in a comfortable setting.

“People do congregate very easily in here,” Fountain says of the kitchen and adjoining sitting room.

“I wanted it to be open to all of the other main rooms of the house,” she says, indicating how the kitchen flows into the sitting room and breakfast table area and also offers a mahogany staircase, which leads to the bedrooms upstairs.

Fountain says that she based the color scheme in the kitchen on the lamps that hang above the island counter. The pendants have a gray tinge to them until they are turned on, at which point they glow through the colorful spotted paint that decorates the lamps. Fountain bought the pendants long before she built her current home, but she intended for them to stand out.

Fountain wanted the house to have a natural feel to it and to instill in it a comfortable and classy atmosphere.

“I hope that when people visit, that’s exactly how they’ll feel,” she says. “Most of all, I want them to have a better understanding of what Kitchen Kapers is and the great work that they do and the beautiful work that Fountain Homes does.”

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