Wow! I just totally fell for that vintage pink and white kitchen. If I found a summer home that had a kitchen like that I would just have to have it!

My design would have to include the baby turtles backsplash that c9pilot just posted a few days ago.

Love the first two kitchens, but that view in the last one is just gorgeous!

Perfect timing! I'm renovating a condo at the beach.

Bumping back to page 1.

Well, I started trying to figure out Olioboard by doing. While I was looking for something I've always liked to kick off my sandy old kitchen imaginings, though, my fancy was yanked in a bizarrely different direction. Also bizarrely, apparently I needed someone else to choose what I never would, because next thing I know a cream-and-taupe Chicagoan named Christine is making these decisions, eyebrows in the air and muttering, "Well, why not?" (Seemingly even my emotional surrogate has to be someone whose tastes I can sort of identify with, although I'd love a sandy old kitchen in Florida and she'd never even imagined visiting one en passant.) Where this stuff is coming from and where we're going with it, I don't know, but neither of us are taking any of it too seriously. :)

Rosie, one thing I've always enjoyed about the DATs is that they let you take "you" out of the equation and do a design that you never would have chosen for yourself. Designing for yourself, you have to worry about living with the consequences for 20 years, and I think that most people tend to lean a bit conservative as a consequence. Doing a purely theoretical design for a purely theoretical client who exists only in your mind is very freeing.

I'm looking forward to seeing what "Christine" comes up with.

Florida's pulling Christine out of her comfort zone, too. She took a surprising fancy to that Murano glass stove hood on another thread but decided regretfully that it'd probably be more likely to make people notice things like the chip on the old stove and the pantry's otherwise comfortable little cant.

Olioboard turned out to be pretty easy. Thanks to whoever suggested it on the linked thread. It has plain rooms to fill, but I'm just clicking and dropping items off the web to a blank screen.

When I think "beach house", I think of various shades of blue & turquoise, yellows and white.
Washed out wood, like driftwood, is okay, too. But that last picture takes it!
Doesn't matter if it's a traditional or modern look, you can't go wrong!

@Holly-Kay - thanks!

This post was edited by c9pilot on Tue, Jul 9, 13 at 10:37

I like this:
{{gwi:1928690}}

You are very welcome C9, I love your baby turtles!

I tend to think of beach houses as fairly casual--something designed with the expectation that people will be walking in and out with wet, sandy feet. However, in my search for pics of beach houses, I found a lot of highfalutin kitchens--which I guess makes sense given the price of beach real estate. If you can afford the house, you can afford the fancy kitchen. But the result was a lot of real-life beach house kicthens that looked like they could have been in any well-appointed house, anywhere. Nothing said "beach" to me.

Nosoccermom, I like the one you posted. I could see kids tracking sand in there (if that makes sense as a beach kitchen criterion).

C9pilot, the view from that last kitchen is fabulous, almost to the point where you don't notice the kitchen design.

I am going to recycle a kitchen I used in the design around a non SGTG white kitchen.
.My design is for a young couple in their late 20's. They just bought their first home in La Jolla, Ca. Small bungalow and they are on a budget. They DIY'ed their own stained concrete counters after seeing an add for a company that did it professionally. there was a learning curve so they practiced first. They used ikea for base cabs and have used all surfboard shelves instead of uppers. They repurposed an old dresser for an island and found galvanized steel pulls to use on the ikea cabs. They refinished all the homes flooring with a driftwood finish and they added a ceiling fan light fixture over island

Over sink light

Surfboards turned upside down for shelves.

I was thinking about some of the designs from old threads when I posted this. Leia_in_lalaland also had a surfer beach house in the "White" thread with kitschy hula dancers. And anna_chosak's shagreen and fishscale tile beach house from the animal prints thread was fabulous.

Roarah, I like your aqua just as much now as the first time you posted it. But... this was supposed to just be the introductory thread, not for posting actual designs! (The best laid plans...) When I post the design thread, will you repost?

Bumping back to page 1.

Bump.

Bump. I just though of the perfect lighting fixture....

MrsMortarmixer asked about beach house styles on the other thread--in the context of "what style house are you designing for." Beach house architectural styles can be anything really, depending on when they were built, the owner's taste, and how much money was invested. They all tend to be designed with plenty of ocean-facing windows to capture the view.

Here's a smattering of Hawaiian beach homes, from modest to extravagant and from outrageously ethnic to minimalist modern.

{{gwi:1928694}}

Here are some Florida beach houses:

Cape Hatteras:

{{gwi:1928704}}

Nantucket:

{{gwi:1928708}}

Santa Cruz:

{{gwi:1928712}}

I'm late getting my board together. Just had a quick glance, these kitchens look great! I promise to get mine together tomorrow, will review the others after that. Thanks for starting this cawaps.