A Walnut Creek kitchen

This panel was shaped to a ceiling that is not flat, not square and not parallel to anything. There is no version of it you can order.

Wide view of a rift white oak kitchen: an L-shaped run of oak cabinets, a marble-wrapped island with open oak-lined niches, a tall wall of pale textured pocket doors, and a solid oak ceiling plane running across the top of the frame into the dining area. — The oak plane overhead is the panel. Follow it to the right and it turns down the wall as one continuous piece.

View through the oak-lined opening between kitchen and dining room, the oak wrapping the ceiling and returning down the near side of the opening, with the marble island and a dining table beyond. — The same panel from the dining side. The corner is a glued solid-wood edge, not a trim piece covering a gap.

The kitchen from the opposite corner: a marble slab backsplash around a wide window, brass ceiling spots, the island with three stools, and the oak ceiling returning at the top left beside a stained glass window. — Top left, where the oak meets the original stained glass. That junction was cut to the building, not to a drawing.

The marble-clad island seen end on, its end panel opened into four oak-lined niches holding pottery and books, with three oak stools along the side and the pale textured pantry doors behind. — The end of the island is not a slab of stone. It is a case, lined in oak, with the marble returned into every opening.

Close view into the island niches: oak shelves and uprights set against book-matched marble backs, holding a terracotta vessel and a few books. — Close up, the join. Oak meets stone on four edges in each opening and the reveal is even on all of them.

A full-height wall of pale textured cabinet doors with one bay slid open on pocket hardware, revealing oak shelves with crockery, jars and a coffee machine above an oak drawer bank and marble counter. — Six bays of pocket doors. They slide back into the cabinet rather than swinging, which is why nothing is in the way when the wall is open.

The island from the seating side, two upholstered oak stools in the foreground, a marble slab backsplash running up and around a wide window over the sink, and the oak drawer runs returning along the right wall.

An oak window seat built under a tall window, flanked by a full-height oak cabinet, with cushions, books and a dining table edge in the foreground. — The bench is built in and the drawer fronts under it line through with the cabinet beside it.

A drinks niche framed in book-matched grey and gold marble, with two marble floating shelves holding glassware, lit from above, over an oak four-door cabinet with flush round pulls. — The bar. The oak reveal inside the stone opening is a separate piece, scribed to the marble on all four sides.

Templated in place

2025-04-30 · from the shop’s daily record

Ram Board was tried first and rejected as too flexible to hold a line. The ceiling was instead chalk-lined and templated with two-inch strips cut from a utility sheet, hot-glued and stapled together in situ, labelled on every side, then lifted off in one piece and drawn onto the panels.

Two panels joined into one

2025-04-30 · from the shop’s daily record

The seam between the two panels came up out of square and was recut until it closed. Biscuit-cut, glued, and clamped by hot-gluing sacrificial boards to the faces so the clamps had something to pull against.

A wrong cut, and a panel lost

2025-05-01 · from the shop’s daily record

Sizing the edge, the cut went wrong and ruined one section. The damaged piece was not thrown away: it was run up on the drywall lift first, to learn how the panel would behave and to check the seam held. That dry run is where we found the finished length needed to come down an eighth of an inch to clear the bow in the walls.

Re-seamed with a new panel

2025-05-06 · from the shop’s daily record

Old biscuits removed, the seam sanded and cleaned, new biscuits glued in. Hot glue would not hold the joining boards this time, so the panel was pulled together with toe straps instead. Solid wood edges biscuited on, every seam puttied.

Hung from inside the attic

2025-05-07 · from the shop’s daily record

Twelve L-brackets were fabricated, the ceiling drywall cut open between the joists, and the brackets fixed to two joists. Construction adhesive, then the panel lifted into place with a drywall lift, three people, helping hands and wall jacks — and screwed through the brackets from inside the attic above. The insulation went back and the drywall was patched behind it.

What this does not show

This is one element of one kitchen. It was chosen because the shop wrote down every day of it, which is not true of most jobs.
No price is shown. The documents on this job do not cover the first three and a half months of work, so any figure we published would look precise and would not be.
The marble, the stone shelves, the glass, the appliances, the lighting and the floor are not ours. We do not make or quote countertops and sinks at all.
The photographs are of the finished room as it was styled and shot. We have not retouched them, and no photograph here shows the panel that was ruined — by the time anything was photographed, it had been remade.

Customer name and address withheld. ← More kitchens