This striking cabinet is the first thing you see when you open the front door to this Agoura Hills home. Because the open plan interiors had few walls available for art, our design had to do triple duty--be a dramatic introduction to the home, offer artful display space, and also provide lots of room for storage. Fortunately, our clients were very open to new and original ideas. Our concept centered on the large lighted floor-to-ceiling decorative panel, a piece we designed and had fabricated in laser cut wood. Then behind this "secret door", we housed hidden top to bottom storage shelves. Additional storage is offered in the cabinets beneath the adjustable display shelves. The adjustability allows the type of asymmetrical arrangement seen here or other configurations if desired. Lighting is another interesting aspect of this design. In both the central panel and in all the display areas only LED were used. These lights use so little energy that hours and hours of use results in negligible use of electricity -- great for both the environment and the light bills!
A close-up of the previous page shows details of how our laser panel was constructed. We used wood slats of varying thicknesses and varying distances from one another to achieve the effects we get in this design. We also made this door without a door handle (using touch latches instead) so it would not be apparent that this was a door at all. You can also catch a glimpse of how skillfully our cabinetmaker hid the strips of LED lights.
For her dramatic powder bath remodel, our Westlake Village client wanted a cabinet that would become an heirloom piece of furniture. Her wish was for a Zen style room, outfitted with simple but very high quality materials. Accordingly, we designed a cabinet to be fabricated in solid walnut, with panels on doors and cabinet sides of exquisite, book-matched walnut burl. To fully appreciate the beauty of the wood, we specified no stain, only clear finishes on the walnut. Absolute black granite is seen on both the thick countertop and for the sink bowl, with an added special detail of recessed black granite insets in the center part of the cabinet. The resulting effect (when viewed from in front of the cabinet) is the illusion of a black granite pedestal beneath the black granite counter and sink.
Part of our remodel of this Westlake Master bath involved cabinetry. The old cabinets had three problems -- they were unattractive, poorly made, and had no place to store the many bottles cluttering the countertop. Our solution to the first issue was to design doors and drawers with an interesting stepped pattern. We finished these high quality cabinets in a glazed creamy finish, and added attractive brushed nickel pulls. The clutter problem was solved by our design of extra deep drawers in which the bottles could stand upright. So our client ended up with a bath that was highly efficient as well as totally luxurious.
Because our client was also a builder, making big changes to his Camarillo home was easy. He sought a major makeover without enlarging the house, so we had to take the one usable family room wall and convert it into a place for a big screen TV, storage, and display area. By removing the fireplace and end window, it all fit. The resulting built-in cabinetry gave him both the function he wanted as well as the focal design feature of the whole kitchen/family room space. Notice the beautifully carved columns and the colorful displays highlighted by our unusual lighting design.
We designed this unique cabinet to hold audio video components and DVD storage. Cabinets of this size (around seven feet in length) are not available ready made, so we had to create one. One of the most unusual aspects of this design is the laser cut decorative panels inserted in each door. Speaker cloth sits behind these laser panels, making the cabinet as functional as it is decorative.
The task here was to design functional, but "cool" cabinetry for this young athlete's South Bay home. He had a wall mount TV, but no place to store A/V components and DVDs. There was a recess beneath the TV that was deep enough for the components, but was too narrow across to visually balance the width of the TV screen. While I knew I could use wall space to the left of the recess to gain added width, I could not move the TV to the left and still have it in the best spot for viewing. My solution was to create an unusually shaped cabinet with a wood frame for the existing TV, joined to a new storage cabinet beneath. The resulting "off center" design is much more interesting than if the two parts had been arranged in a more conventional manner, and gives us the ideal balance between function and style.
With a design that had lots of black on black (black cabinets, absolute black granite counters etc) we needed an unusual accent to add interest. So we added stainless steel panels (in a pattern of mini squares) as inserts for each door. These panels not only make the doors more interesting, but also serve to lighten and brighten this executive bathroom.
Custom bookshelves we created for this room add a sense of architectural structure as you enter the room. Because the shelves are near the door, we made the sides "semi-open" to keep a spacious feeling and simultaneously to offer a most original looking design. In the rear of this photo, you glimpse another custom cabinet we created to house the A/V components for their TV. This cabinet features a vine-like pattern in wood, echoing the plants used throughout this space.
These Camarillo clients needed a cabinet to house audio/video components. Because the cabinet would be prominently located, they asked us to create an original piece to house the equipment. We designed a wooden, 3 door cabinet, highlighted by large custom steel door pulls with similar metal on the outside legs. The body of the cabinet has a medium wood stain, while the perimeter is finished in black. As a final design detail, we added inner slab style support legs, also finished in black. The clients got what they wanted--a cabinet that is truly one-of-a-kind.
