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Martin Hackl

My first kitchen project, about 18 years ago.  I was surprised to find these pictures.  Eva, my wife, just loved coming home from work one day to find the kitchen, that she had just eaten breakfast in that morning, suddenly torn apart. 

What better place to experiment with design, than in your own house? 

If there is a better or more indulgent spouse (and partner) in this world than my wife, then I don't know about it!

Below are some before-and-after pictures (this was when I still had hair!).

(Click thumbnails for larger image)

Briefly, the story of the redwood is that my uncle (Bill) had a large supply of clear, wide, old-growth redwood in long lengths (12 to 14 feet!) that he was using to make decks with.  That market dried up - people wanted treated lumber (most of those decks are probably now landfill) and so he had all this material he could not use. So what do you do with 700 board feet of free redwood?  Well. build kitchen cabinets of course.  I still have a few nice boards of this wood in my garage.  It's just too beautiful to cut up!

I designed the trestle table with the corners eased off (as I also did with the cabinet ends) to reduce its visual size as well making passage around the table a little less crowded in a very busy kitchen.  (The nice antique, white-painted Windsor high-backed chairs that we used are not shown in the photos.)