A Fabrication Partner for Marin County Architects

Marin County is one of the most varied stretches of residential California, packed into the narrow band between the bay and the Pacific. In a single afternoon an architect can move from the deepwater frontage of Belvedere and Tiburon, across the Corte Madera and Larkspur flats, into the wooded folds of Mill Valley below Mount Tamalpais, and out to the estate parcels of Ross, Kentfield and San Anselmo. Each of those sites asks something different of a section. This page explains how PineWood supports your drawing set across that map: the shop drawings we return, the reveal and tolerance conventions we hold, and the material choices that respond to bay light, slope and canyon damp. We are a licensed California contractor (CSLB #1095293), founded in 2006 and operating as the cabinetry division of Voronenko & Ethen Associates, with design and build under one roof in Rocklin.

We start from your plans, elevations, sections and finish schedule and translate them into detailed, dimensioned shop drawings, with construction, joinery, hardware and finish called out explicitly. Your review and approval of those drawings is the single gate in our workflow; nothing is released to the floor until you have signed off, and changes are far cheaper on paper than in hardwood. We field-verify the room before we draw, which on a split-level hillside plan is where the real scribe numbers come from. Where a drawn detail needs a constructability conversation, we bring it to you on the shop drawings with a proposed solution that protects the proportion you drew. The whole sequence is set out on our trade process page.

A complete millwork section lets the first shop-drawing round be a confirmation rather than a translation. Our specifications reference lists what to call out: construction type (inset face-frame or frameless) with target reveals, species and veneer cut with any grain-matching intent, box and drawer substrates, door and edge profiles, finish system with color and sheen, hardware with finishes, and performance requirements. It also explains how we build to it: veneer-core hardwood plywood boxes, solid hardwood face frames, five-piece cope-and-stick or slab doors, and dovetailed solid-wood drawer boxes on concealed full-extension soft-close undermount slides.

Our shop drawings follow ANSI/AWI 0620-2024. The critical reveal is a nominal 3.2 mm, an eighth of an inch, with a permitted uniform variance of plus or minus .031 inch at Premium grade, .063 at Custom and .094 at Economy; door and drawer-front edges align within .031, .047 or .063 inch by grade. On the water in Tiburon or Belvedere, where the design keeps cabinetry low and exact so the bay stays in the room, a long run of base cabinets under a window is read from across the floor, and the standard defines inconspicuous as exactly that kind of distance: 24 inches at Premium, 48 at Custom, 72 at Economy. If the documents reference the standard without naming a grade, Custom applies by default.

On the bay frontages of Tiburon, Belvedere and Sausalito, the hillside contemporaries and converted houseboats chase the view from every window, and the drawings answer with a disciplined run of base cabinets, a long working island, and tall storage pushed to the interior walls that have no view to give up. The millwork stays quiet and exact. In the Mill Valley canyons and the shingled hillsides below Mount Tamalpais the variables change to slope, shade and moisture: steep lots, tight access, split-level plans, and cool damp air under the redwoods that the finish schedule has to acknowledge. For the older estates of Ross, Kentfield and San Anselmo the work leans toward warmth and continuity, with framed cabinetry, furniture-grade detailing and materials that sit alongside the original architecture rather than fighting it, while San Rafael and Novato range from Mission-era cores to mid-century tracts and newer infill.

What ties the county together is the kitchen as the room that opens onto a deck, a patio or a garden. Our sections are used to detailing that threshold: islands and counters as the working anchor of an indoor-outdoor plan, and sightlines kept low where a window frames the water or a stand of oaks.

The cool, moist air that settles under the redwoods and the fog that moves across the bay frontages are specification questions before they are shop questions. Wood arrives at one moisture content and settles to another, and a panel that changes width against joints fitted before it did is the single most common source of a reveal that no longer matches the one beside it. We respond with veneer-core plywood casework, floating panels, solid domestic hardwoods selected for stability, and finish systems matched to the exposure, with samples prepared on the actual project species for your approval before production. The arithmetic behind those choices, from equilibrium moisture content to grain orientation, is set out in our guide to wood movement in cabinetry.

Steep lots make for tight access, so we plan cabinetry around real delivery and installation paths and build to completion in the Rocklin shop, where finishing happens in controlled conditions rather than on a canyon site. Delivery and installation are sequenced with the general contractor so the work arrives when the space is ready, and our own crews install it. How we coordinate with the builder is on our Marin County builders page; the same work from the owner’s side is described on the Marin County homeowner hub. We coordinate closely with the architects, designers and contractors already on these jobs, and you keep one point of contact from the first review to the walk-through.