We at Trilogy Partners were very proud when the kitchen we designed with the assistance of Kathye Conti made the cover of Timber Home Living Magazine. This kitchen had proved quite a challenge indeed. From the beginning we were dealing with a bit of a tight space. Still, we needed to create a kitchen suitable for pros. This kitchen would feature two sinks, Dacor appliances including a 48″ Fridge, 2 dishwashers, microwave, cappuccino  maker, a wall oven and a 36″ Range with convection oven.

Perhaps the biggest challenge however was that during construction we discovered that we had no way to vent the range hood. A downdraft vent would not work with the range oven we had chosen, and venting upward would mean our vent pipe would perfectly bisect a roof valley. This would certainly cause the roof to leak, if not this year, then next. After studying the problem for a week, we decided we really didn’t want to build a chase to hide the vent pipe. We instead came up with a far better, albeit unorthodox, solution.

As the photos show, we left the vent pipe exposed, ran it across the ceiling, and used it as the structure for a hanging pot rack.  A problem had been solved and the solution became one of the highlights of Caleb’s Kitchen.

A solution good enough to make the cover of Timber Home Living magazine.

As previously posted, I often work with clients to develop a “fictional story” that will aid in the design of a home. This story is the lynchpin for a thematic approach for design. In the case of the house on lot 231, AKA Caleb’s Journey, we wanted a home that looked like it simply belonged in Colorado. The Highlands in Breckenridge development is filled with homes that fit the mold of mountain contemporary. We wanted something mountain authentic. So we invented Caleb, the man who built the house. His story goes like this: Caleb was a man who had spent years building homes for other people. Whenever he finished a home he took the left over scraps with him and they became, over the years, a very large pile in the backyard behind his cabin. One day Caleb estimated he had enough material to begin the construction of his own home. And over the next couple of years, he built the home of his dreams from castaway materials.The result was a rustic, well worn dwelling completely at home in the Colorado Mountains. This home features a timber frame made from 20″ logs and hewn douglas fir dimensional beams, reclaimed siding and ceiling cladding, and gorgeous oak floors recycled from a granary. Perhaps Caleb was only a figment of our imagination. But he came to life within the walls of Caleb’s Journey.

If you were going to design a home, where would your ideas come from?