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
Teal throughout, hood included. A colour this committed only works where the room can carry it, and this one can: the ceiling runs high, there is a clerestory window feeding daylight in above the cabinets, and the walls stay white. Against the lit bottles behind the glass, the teal gives the room a second thing to look at instead of leaving the cellar to do all the work on its own.
Counters and flooring
Quartzite counters, with the veining carried up behind the range. Quartzite is quarried rather than engineered, so the slab is its own thing and no two are alike, and it takes a hot pan in a way engineered quartz does not. It does want sealing, which is the trade for the veining.
Luxury vinyl plank on the floor. Waterproof, warmer and quieter underfoot than tile, and it takes the traffic a kitchen that doubles as a gathering room actually gets.
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.
