After: Backlit wine bottles showcased at the end of the hall
Glass doors at the end of the hall display wine bottles on steel frame wine racks, an acrylic panel that resembles sandblasted glass is backlit with LED lights creating a glow behind the wine bottles. You wouldn’t know by looking at it that this whole wine rack can be slid aside to reveal stairs into a hidden wine cellar.
Who doesn’t love the idea of a secret room and even better when it holds a lot of wine?
My clients had cases of wine stacking up in a spare room for lack of a real storage area. When we discussed options of where we could put a wine cellar the idea of using the naturally cool space under the house seemed like a smart move. The house is built into a hillside and the access space under the house was a sloped mess of concrete with exposed pipes and insulation.
Before: Access space under the house
First order of business was to jackhammer out what excess concrete we could to create a few terraced levels and figure out how to make it easy to access from the house. Then it was all about how to design as much wine storage capacity as possible in a way that was interesting and attractive.
It seemed a shame to put a solid door on the wine cellar when we could create a great focal point at the end of the hallway. Finding glass doors that would fit our purposes proved a bit of a challenge though. We needed to keep the cold air out of the living area and the warm air out of the wine storage. Standard glass wine cellar doors had more framing than glass and we wanted as much glass as possible to showcase the wine. After much research we came up with the idea to use commercial refrigerator case doors.
Wine display rack slides aside to reveal the entrance to the hidden wine cellar. The sliding rack itself can hold over 200 wine bottles when full. Once you slide the initial wine rack to the side diamond tread plate stairs are revealed leading you up to 3 levels of concrete lined with wooden wine racks.
As we were left with some exposed pipes it seemed natural to go with a somewhat industrial look and then glam it up a bit. Shiny diamond tread plate is juxtaposed with rough concrete, natural cork, and a deep blue wall color.
Industrial Glam wine storage
A challenging project to design and engineer but so worth it. My clients have a fun secret and wine storage for over 1200 bottles!
Metal, concrete, cork, and wood against a backdrop of intense blue.