A full gut in Carmel Valley, and the project on this list with the most distinctive single element: a glass-fronted wine cellar built into the kitchen rather than tucked away somewhere else in the house.
The wine cellar
Building a wine cellar into a kitchen is more involved than fitting a cabinet. Wine wants a stable temperature and it does not want the swings a kitchen produces — a room with a range in it is the least stable environment in the house.
That means the enclosure has to be built as its own sealed space: insulated, with glass specified for the job, and cooling that holds a set temperature rather than merely running cold. Glass fronts look effortless and are the hardest part to get right, because glazing is where a sealed enclosure most easily loses its temperature.
Done properly it becomes the focal point of the room. A lit run of bottles behind glass gives the kitchen something no cabinetry can — depth, and a reason for the eye to stop.
Cabinetry
White oak throughout. It takes a light finish without turning orange the way some oaks do, and the grain carries a large expanse without needing a second material to break it up. Against the glass and the bottles behind it, the timber keeps the room warm rather than clinical.
Counters
Quartz, for a household that wanted a surface needing no sealing and no particular thought. Engineered stone is consistent slab to slab, so what is specified is what arrives — useful where the cabinetry and the cellar are already doing the visual work.
The result
A kitchen with a genuine centrepiece. The wine cellar is the sort of thing that sounds like an indulgence and turns out to be the reason the room gets used — it makes the kitchen somewhere people gather rather than somewhere food is prepared. Seven weeks from demolition to final walkthrough.
