Brush Prairie, WA 98606 — Clark County
Most kitchen remodels start with a kitchen that has failed. This one did not. The homeowners had a recent, well-built, disciplined kitchen — flat fronts, full-height cabinetry, no ornament, white quartz counters — and they liked the discipline of it. What they did not like was the colour. Matte black cabinetry ran across every upper and every tall run in the room, floor to ceiling, and the room has a bank of tall windows over the sink looking straight into trees. All that daylight arrived and had almost nothing bright to bounce off. So the brief was unusually precise: keep the rules, change what the surfaces do with the light. Every run was rebuilt in plain-sliced white oak, one green terrazzo-look quartz was used for both the counters and a full-height backsplash, the dark band over the cooktop became a plaster hood finished like the wall, the refrigerator disappeared behind matching oak panels, and the walk-in pantry was rebuilt in oak with a coffee station and a wine refrigerator.
It is worth being clear about what was wrong here, because it was not the usual list. The cabinetry was not failing. The layout was broadly sensible. Nothing was yellowed, chipped or thirty years old, and the counters were white quartz. The homeowners’ own photos of the original kitchen show a genuinely handsome modern room: flat-front matte black cabinetry running to the ceiling, black uppers across the whole cooking wall, a black open-shelving unit at the end of the sink run, medium-brown wood drawer banks below, and a wood-panelled island under a white waterfall quartz top.
And it was dark. Not dim from a lack of fixtures — the ceiling is full of recessed cans — but dark in the way a room is when its largest surfaces absorb light instead of passing it on. The tall windows over the sink face into trees, which is the best and softest daylight in the house. Black uppers on the cooking wall, black on the tall appliance tower and black base cabinets under the windows meant that light landed and stopped. The one open shelving unit, which should have relieved the mass, instead read as a dark recess because its interior sat in shadow. Exposed stainless — a French-door refrigerator and a stack of wall ovens — cut the tall run into pieces, which is exactly what full-height cabinetry is supposed to avoid.
So this was a palette problem wearing the costume of a remodel. The homeowners were not abandoning the style — they wanted the same flat, quiet, full-height cabinetry, the same absence of ornament, the same clear counters. They wanted it in oak.
All five of the homeowners’ before photos are paired with the finished room below, and every one of them is in the gallery further down the page.
When the style is staying and only the palette is changing, the design work is not about invention — it is about knowing which surfaces actually control how bright a room feels and spending the budget there, in the right order. Cabinetry first, because it is the largest surface in any kitchen by a wide margin. Then the wall between counter and upper cabinet, which sits at eye level. Then the hood, which is the biggest single object at head height. Then the appliances, which is where a minimal kitchen usually gives itself away.
Every cabinet in the room is new, frameless, with flat doors and drawer fronts in stain-grade plain-sliced white oak, stained and clear-coated in the shop rather than on site. Plain-sliced was specified deliberately: it gives the long, straight, cathedral grain that stays calm across a wide flat front, where a busier veneer would read restless. The doors were drawn with vertical grain and finished as a set, so the colour runs consistently from the sink wall to the tall appliance run. This one change is the reason the room reads completely differently in exactly the same daylight.
The homeowners chose the countertop material themselves — a green terrazzo-look quartz with a heavy aggregate of green, gold and cream chips — and it is used for the counters, the island top and a full-height backsplash that runs from the counter to the underside of the cabinets. One material for both means no grout lines and no transition at eye level, which is where a dark or patterned backsplash would otherwise eat the light. Even the outlets are cut straight into the stone. Because the quartz carries all of the room’s pattern, the cabinetry is free to stay completely plain.
The original kitchen had a heavy dark band of cabinetry above the cooktop and no proper hood. In its place is a custom hood surround finished like the wall it sits against, with a stainless liner tucked up inside it doing the actual ventilation. A hood is unavoidable in a kitchen that cooks; making it read as architecture rather than as furniture is the next best thing to not having one. It is also the element that most clearly marks this as a Japandi room rather than a contemporary one.
The tall run opposite the cooking wall is continuous oak from floor to ceiling, and the refrigerator is inside it: panel-ready surrounds and full-height door panels in the same plain-sliced oak as everything else, with long black pulls as the only clue. The wall oven went into oak-fronted cabinetry for the same reason. What stayed visible is the pro-style stainless gas range, and that is deliberate — when everything else in a kitchen is one material, one honest piece of equipment reads as intent rather than as clutter. In the original room, stainless was doing the opposite job: three separate appliances chopping one wall into three.
Open shelving only works when its interior is as bright as the room. Here it was a shadowed black recess, so it was replaced with a full-height oak cabinet that squares off the end of the sink run and adds enclosed storage exactly where the old unit was losing it. The display shelving moved to the end of the island instead, where it is lit from two sides, holds the cookbooks and reads as an intentional gap rather than a dark hole.
The plan was largely sound but not untouched: framing was altered to suit the new cabinet runs and an interior door was relocated, so circulation stopped cutting across the work zone and the new full-height runs had uninterrupted wall to land on. In a kitchen where every run has to read as continuous joinery, uninterrupted wall is the scarce resource, and moving a door is a small line item that buys a lot of it.
The original pantry was a proper walk-in room let down by its fittings — plain white shelving over a white counter. It was rebuilt with custom white oak shelving running floor to ceiling on two walls, oak base cabinets, a counter that works as a coffee station, and a glass-front wine refrigerator, all lit by a clerestory window. Clear counters in the kitchen are a storage outcome rather than a habit, and the pantry is where that outcome is bought.
Plywood box upgrades, white melamine interiors, soft-close slides and hinges throughout, and a set of pull-outs doing specific jobs: a garbage pull-out, a spice pull-out, a utensil bin base organiser and a pocket-door system for the appliance cabinet. Every one of those exists so that something which would otherwise sit on a counter has an assigned place behind a flat front.
The kitchen was stripped back and rebuilt. Our in-house crew handled design, demolition, framing, cabinet installation and finish carpentry, with licensed, vetted trade partners on the plumbing and electrical scopes and on the stone fabrication. One Serden Group project manager ran the schedule, the cabinet shop coordination and the inspections from the first walkthrough to the final punch list.
A Japandi kitchen is defined by what is missing from the specification as much as by what is in it. There is one cabinet species in this room, one stone doing two jobs, and one hardware finish — and that is very nearly the entire list.
On a fully custom kitchen the cabinet shop, not the construction crew, sets the calendar. Every box in this room was built for its own opening, so design and shop drawings had to be finished and signed off before demolition — and the shop time runs alongside the early site work rather than after it. The on-site order below is not a preference; it is dictated by inspections and by the fact that stone can only be templated off cabinets that are already installed and levelled.
Stage 1
Layout adjustments, then full shop drawings for every kitchen and pantry cabinet: frameless construction, flat fronts, vertical grain direction, plain-sliced white oak faces, white melamine interiors, and each pull-out and appliance surround located to the inch. Nothing gets cut until this is approved, because a frameless run cannot be adjusted on site.
Stage 2
Clark County permits pulled, then the kitchen stripped out. Framing altered for the new layout and the interior door relocated. With the room open, the plan is set out and every cabinet opening verified against the approved drawings.
Stage 3
Plumbing and electrical reworked for the new configuration — sink and dishwasher, the range, the hood, the panel-clad refrigerator run and circuits for the pantry and its wine refrigerator. Rough inspections signed off before anything is closed up.
Stage 4
Sheetrock patched and finished to match the existing surfaces, then primed and painted. This is the quiet stretch on site and the busy one in the shop, where the oak is being stained and clear-coated and the hood surround is being built.
Stage 5
Cabinets delivered, loaded in and set: scribed, levelled, fastened and aligned so the gaps between flat fronts stay consistent across every run. The hood surround, the refrigerator panels and the pantry cabinetry go in at the same time.
Stage 6
Counters templated off the installed cabinets — which is why this cannot happen any earlier — then fabricated along with the full-height backsplash pieces, delivered and set. Undermount sink fitted and the faucet reconnected.
Stage 7
Outlet caps reinstalled in the stone, hardware fitted, and appliances installed and commissioned. Final inspection, debris haul-away, cleanup, punch list and a walkthrough — plus the return visits for adjustments once the kitchen has been lived in.
Seventy photos of the completed kitchen and walk-in pantry, followed by the homeowners’ five before photos. Select any image to open the full gallery.
“We were worried we wouldn’t be able to find anyone who could deliver on the vision we had for our new kitchen. Thankfully, once we got going with Serden Group LLC, we quickly realized the contractor and cabinet maker had listened intently to what we wanted and came up with a design we loved. The install was quick and everyone communicated in a timely manner. Once we were finished, we even had the guys come back several times for adjustments. Overall, the experience was exceptional. Would absolutely recommend to everyone.”
Jennifer S.
Google review — Brush Prairie, WA