Cow Hollow Kitchens for Victorian and Edwardian Flats

PineWood Cabinets designs, builds and installs custom kitchens and cabinetry for Cow Hollow homeowners remodeling Victorian and Edwardian flats and single-family houses. Every cabinet is built and finished in our Rocklin, Placer County workshop and delivered shop-finished, and our own crew makes the roughly two-hour drive to San Francisco to measure, plan the carry and install.

Cow Hollow is the low valley between the Marina to the north and the slope of Pacific Heights to the south, running roughly from Van Ness toward the Presidio. The name is older than the houses: in the 1860s this was dairy pasture on the edge of town, and the 1861 octagon house at Gough and Union is a survivor of that era. The cows left as the city grew, and the blocks filled with the bay-windowed Victorians and, after 1906, the Edwardian flats that define the neighborhood today. Cow Hollow sat beyond the reach of the 1906 fire, so an unusual number of its 1870s to 1890s houses are still standing, lined up along Filbert, Greenwich, Green and Vallejo Streets and above the storefronts on Union Street.

The kitchens follow the building type. In a Victorian or Edwardian flat the kitchen is at the end of the hall, narrow, with a window at the far end and a back porch or light well beyond it. In the single-family houses on the cross streets the kitchen is larger but still at the rear and often a step down, with a pantry between it and the dining room. Nearly every Cow Hollow project we see asks for the same things: open the back of the home into one room, bring in the light from the rear garden, and fit cabinetry that belongs beside the original trim rather than fighting it.

Then there is the street. Union Street and its cross streets are busy, parking is scarce, most buildings have no driveway and the flats are reached by a shared stair, so we build in modules sized to the stair, the landings and the hall door we measured, finish everything in our Rocklin facility, and schedule delivery so the crew is there to carry and set it the same day.

The building permit for a Cow Hollow kitchen remodel comes from the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection. Work that changes the exterior, including enlarged rear openings, enclosed porches and additions, or that affects a building the city considers a historic resource, can also go through Planning Department review; interior cabinetry and finish work within the existing footprint generally does not. Moving walls, gas or plumbing moves the project into a fuller permit. We identify which path a design falls into before the drawings are finished.

Cow Hollow’s climate is cool and marine, but the valley is sheltered by Pacific Heights and gets more sun and less wind than the Richmond or Sunset. The air is still damp, winters are wet, and a rear kitchen in a flat may never fully dry out between fog and rain. Wood moves less in those conditions than in our hot, dry home valley, but finishes have to cope with steady humidity. We build frame-and-panel doors so panels can float, favor stable species such as painted maple, white oak and walnut, and apply catalyzed finishes in our Rocklin finishing facility so every face arrives sealed. A shop finish also keeps solvent fumes out of a shared building during a windows-shut San Francisco summer.

Because the light is better here, the palette has more range. South-facing rear kitchens can carry stained oak, walnut and deeper painted colors, while a north-facing flat below Union Street still benefits from light paint, glazed uppers and open shelving that bounce what daylight there is.