A full gut in Pacific Beach, finished in six weeks. The appliances were already well placed, so nothing was rerouted — which is most of the reason the schedule was short.
The ceiling-recessed hood
The hood is custom and set into the ceiling rather than hung below it. That is a meaningfully different piece of work from fitting a chimney hood to a wall.
Recessing it means the ductwork and the housing sit within the ceiling structure, which has to be framed to take them and finished so the transition disappears. Done properly the hood reads as part of the ceiling rather than an appliance suspended from it, and the sightline across the kitchen stays unbroken — nothing hangs at eye level.
In a room this size that matters. A bulky wall hood would have dominated it; this one does the same job and gets out of the way.
White oak cabinetry, semi-custom
White oak throughout, and semi-custom rather than full custom. Both decisions suited the room.
Semi-custom is built to order from a defined range with modifications where they are needed. Where a kitchen divides sensibly into standard widths and has no awkward structure to design around, full custom buys flexibility that goes unused — and the difference is better spent on stone or on a hood like this one.
One timber, top to bottom, with flat slab doors and no frame or moulding to break it up. In a smaller kitchen that is worth more than a second colour: the run reads as one quiet surface rather than as a row of separate cabinets, and the grain gives the room its warmth without anything else being asked to.
Quartzite, counter and wall
Quartzite counters with the same slab carried up as the backsplash. Running the stone vertically removes the horizontal break a tile backsplash creates, so counter and wall read as one surface — and it takes grout off the wall behind the range, which is the hardest-working surface in any kitchen.
Quartzite is quarried, so each slab is unique, and it handles a hot pan in a way engineered quartz does not.
Flooring
Luxury vinyl plank throughout. Waterproof, warm and quiet underfoot, and forgiving over a slab — a sensible choice near the coast, where humidity is less kind to timber.
The result
A compact kitchen rebuilt entirely inside its existing footprint, with the ceiling doing work the walls did not have room for. Six weeks from demolition to final walkthrough.
