Cucina Kitchens and Baths featured in SLO Tribune
The San Luis Obispo Tribune recently featured a new local home on the Cayucos shoreline that included custom cabinets and interior design help of Cucina Kitchens and Baths.
The Oelker home in Cayucos: Comfortable beachfront living
When it was time to downsize, Carol and Glenn Oelker tapped the talents of their son to build their new home
Each morning, Carol and Glenn Oelker wake to the sight of gulls circling the surf and otters foraging for breakfast.
This was not always the case. Carol, a retired school counselor for the San Luis Coastal Unified School District, and Glenn, an ophthalmologist, lived in an Avila Valley home for 19 years. This June, they downsized from that 3,800-square-foot residence to a more modest 2,600-square-foot beachfront house in Cayucos.
Carol Oelker, who tackled the interior design with the help of Cindy Collins of Cucina Kitchens and Baths, had her own set of challenges. She wanted “to choose interior materials to complement the clean, modern lines of the house and not detract from the phenomenal oceanfront view,” she said.
Her solution was a palette of light neutrals to play up the brightness and openness of the space. To keep rooms from feeling “chopped up,” she chose the same color for all walls: Benjamin Moore’s Edgecomb Grey, a soft, earthy hue. Flooring throughout the house is covered in large, 24-by-48-inch porcelain tile in a color inspired by beach sand.
Neutral does not translate to boring, however. The Oelkers introduced hints of opulence, such as the living room fireplace, which is sheathed in a mosaic of Calcatta marble in shades of tan, gray and warm white from Matt Clark Tile & Stone. The marble pieces were artfully laid out by tile setter Mike Burke to best highlight the dramatic patterns in the stone.
Carol Oelker was aware that the long and narrow shape of the home could feel tunnel-like. She used strong horizontal lines to create the illusion of additional width. Long, horizontal rectangles repeat throughout the house, such as in the kitchen cabinetry and living room fireplace. According to Carol, this was designed to “pull your eye toward the open, extremely large windows on the west end of the house.”