Santa Rita Hills Barn

Our Santa Rita Hills project is truly one for the books!

We were tasked with transforming an old car garage into a fully functioning one bedroom, two bathroom home.

Don’t believe us? Take a look at the Before:

Concrete floors, a lift (!!!!), garage doors, old shop cabinetry and an old shop bathroom was what we had to work with.

So, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. There was obviously a lot of layout work needed to make sure we accommodated all of our client’s requests while working with the structure. Our client specialized in Feng Shui so we learned a lot about the orientation of the entryway, that you can not have fire and water sharing the same wall (i.e. a sink and then a range on the opposite side of the wall) and having the right balance of materials.

Our design team got to work with the layout. We wanted to have a kitchen that encouraged entertaining and multiple chefs in the kitchen at one time. We opted for putting the sink against the exterior wall and putting the range in the island with a ceiling mounted vent system.

The island also features a tiered island that has a seating area at 30” h for extra seating. Our thought was, our clients could take their dining chairs over to the island if they had extra company. Jam packed with storage and waterfall edges, this island is ready to party!

The perimeter wall features floating shelves, large pantry cabinets with roll outs and a flush fridge and freezer columns from Thermador.

In the dining room, we created a bar area that allowed for plenty of glassware storage, a beverage fridge and a bar sink. Perfect for the entertainer!

Here’s a peek at our plans. You can see the complicated structure of that loft area… which I will get into next!

Take a look at these renderings…. You’ll recognize a lot of these elements once you see the final photos!

And… just because these finish schedules take so much time, I have to show it to you. This finish schedule documents the selections we made. We try to be as organized as possible so you don’t have to!

As for finishes.. The fun part. We used Honeycomb Cabinetry for all of the cabinetry featured in the home. Rift sawn white oak and rift sawn white oak painted black set the modern tone for the kitchen. Paired with soapstone and calacatta marble, the countertops really compliment those wood tones. For the extra pop, we went with black windows and designed them to look like a storefront with full access to the front driveway from the living room. Basically, a wall of windows!

My favorite element in the kitchen is the chicago reclaimed brick. It is actual reclaimed brick from brick salvage. Super great customer service too!

Ok, enough blabbering. Here are some photos!

There was a beautiful spiral staircase that led to an upstairs loft with the most amazing light. We knew this space had potential and was tasked with making it into a bedroom and bathroom.

Sounds easy, right?

Why am I showing a pic of the water heater? Well, this is where we put the toilet! Plumbing up here was EXTREMELY difficult as you could imagine. So, this made the most sense for the toilet drain and placement. Now that that was solved… what to do about the rest of the space?

Well, we got to work and we went a little out of the box on this one!

It all fit just like a little puzzle! But we had a lot of challenges with plumbing and had to get really creative. We’re super pleased with the final result!

And that’s a wrap! What did you think about this one?