A full gut in Pacific Beach, built in two-tone custom cabinetry with quartzite carried from the counters straight up the wall.
Blue below, white above
The base cabinets are a custom blue; the uppers are custom white. Both were built for the room rather than ordered from a line.
Two-tone is not only a colour decision — it changes how the kitchen sits. Darker cabinets below and lighter above give the room a base and let the top half recede, so the space reads taller and less closed in than an all-one-colour run. It is a useful move in beach houses, where kitchens are often smaller and ceilings lower than in newer inland construction.
Going custom on both halves matters here because the colours have to match each other in finish and sheen, not just in hue. Two different stock lines rarely do.
Quartzite counters and backsplash
The same quartzite runs across the counters and up the wall as the backsplash. Carrying one stone through both removes the horizontal seam where a counter usually stops and tile begins, so the surface reads as continuous.
Quartzite is a natural stone, quarried rather than manufactured, which means the slab you choose is the slab you get — worth seeing in person before it is cut. It is harder than marble and it will take a hot pan, which engineered quartz will not.
Against blue cabinetry it does something specific: the stone's movement is what carries the visual interest, so the cabinet colour can stay flat and calm underneath it.
Every appliance relocated
All of the appliances moved. That means gas, electrical, water and venting rerun inside the walls and under the floor before anything closed up.
In an older Pacific Beach house this is usually the right call. These kitchens were laid out for how people cooked decades ago, often in a smaller footprint with the refrigerator wherever it fit. Rebuilding the layout is what makes the finished room work.
New windows and LVP flooring
New windows went in throughout while the walls were open — far less disruptive than doing it after the finishes are in. Coastal houses take salt air on the frames, and older single-pane units are usually the weakest point in the whole envelope.
The floors are new luxury vinyl plank: fully waterproof, which is worth having a few blocks from the sand, and forgiving of the sand itself.
The result
A two-tone custom kitchen with quartzite running counter to ceiling, rebuilt from the layout up in seven weeks.
