Charred Oak & Quartzite Kitchen — Oceanbeach Road, Mount Maunganui

On Oceanbeach Road at Mount Maunganui, a step from the tide, one cabinetry language runs from the kitchen through to a dressing suite and bathroom. The kitchen sets the terms: Shou Sugi Ban Charred Oak beneath a warm Cedar tongue and groove ceiling, with Quartzite — veined grey, gold and rust — carrying the island, the full-height splashback and the sink itself.

The island is the defining move. Its waterfall edges are mitred, and the sink is carved straight from the benchtop — one stone with a brass waste and a gunmetal tap set into it. Above the bench sit bronze-framed fluted-glass uppers; over the range, a gunmetal-bronze hood. When the sliders are pushed back the room runs out past sheers glowing with daylight to board-formed concrete and greenery, pale Travertine underfoot.

Up close, the Charred Oak is the story. Shou Sugi Ban leaves a crackle across the grain — under raking light it reads almost topographic — and where a door corner meets the mitred Quartzite frame there is a clean shadow-line reveal, burnt timber against stone veining with nothing else in between. Aged brass bar pulls run across the charred doors, the same brass that returns as towel rails elsewhere in the house.

Beyond the kitchen the register shifts. The dressing room runs low and warm: bronze-framed fluted-glass wardrobes, a Rosso Levanto Marble jewellery island, a teal Venetian-plaster ceiling over smoke-blue carpet, lit amber. The bathroom comes back up to daylight — a Walnut-stained vanity under a Carrara-type Marble top with integrated basins, ivory kit-kat mosaic and brass rails, oxblood towels the one dark note. Bright coastal light in the kitchen, low tungsten in the dressing suite; the same hands, two different rooms.