Arcadia — Glazed-Green Galley Kitchen

The site problem

A 1958 Arcadia ranch with good bones and a bad plan. The kitchen was a closed galley — a narrow corridor walled off from the dining and living rooms, with one small window and a doorway at each end that turned it into a hallway everyone walked through and no one wanted to cook in. The owners had lived with it for a decade and finally admitted the layout, not the finishes, was the problem.

What we did

We took down the two galley walls and made the kitchen one room with the spaces on either side. A single island — honed Calacatta, fourteen feet at the counter — does the work the old walls used to, dividing the room without closing it. The cabinetry is inset, painted a deep glazed green that reads almost black at night and soft in the morning, with a run of open shelving where the old window used to be alone.

Brass throughout — faucet, pulls, the reading light over the shelves — left unlacquered so it would age with the house rather than sit on top of it. The floors are the home's original oak, sanded back and left matte.

The green was the owners' one nervous choice, and it is the first thing every guest mentions. The room finally acts like the middle of the house, because now it is.

The specs

Scope	Full gut; two load-bearing-adjacent walls removed; closed galley opened to one room
Materials	Glazed-green inset cabinetry, honed Calacatta marble, unlacquered brass, original oak floors restored
Timeline	11 weeks on site
Cost band	$145,000

Next project — Paradise Valley, a beige 1990s bath made into a limewash wet room.