The Gallatin Passive House
Designed by North River Architecture, Vernacular Design built most of the cabinetry and built-in furniture, with steel by The Orchard Group and a HenryBuilt kitchen. You’ll find a number of examples of our work below and details for how we brought the designs to life.
Photos by Randazzo & Blau. Styling by Raina Kattelson.
A passive house full of custom woodworking and furniture
We were lucky enough to work with an exceptional team of architects, designers, and a very engaged homeowner to bring not just custom millwork and custom cabinets to life, but also built several of the pieces of custom furniture designed for this stunning passive house in the Hudson Valley.
We created the tables and reclaimed redwood dining table with benches outside the home, and in the living room, you can see the walnut dining table we created for enjoying dinners and entertaining. We also created the light fixture out of steel and white oak, crafted the built in banquette and created interior channels for the LED lighting. Throughout the house, we created white oak multi-ply trim where the plys were exposed.
Custom Furniture in the Living Room
In the living room, you can see a closeup of the walnut dining room table and lighting fixture that we built out of steel and white oak. You can also see the detail of the interior LED lighting channels.
We also built the sofa specifically for the space, with a drawer unit for storage on the end and an angle back with a charging station for phones and laptops.
Custom Shelving, Bed and Nightstands
In the bedroom, we created a custom dresser along with the blackened steel shelving unit and nightstand out of white oak. We also built the bed out of a blackened white oak and all of the trim.
In the hallway, we handled all of the wood lighting details, which you see throughout the house. We created all of the pocket door trim as well as the desk at the end of the hallway, which is a classroom and bridge to the rest of the house.
Millwork and Custom Children’s Bedroom
The children’s bedroom was one of our favorite rooms to build out. The bed is a white oak mult-ply bed system, and on the slab above the bed you can see the veneer we made to look like a stack of plywood.
The housing around the window was built to contain the window shade. The steps lead up to a nook about the bed and double as additional storage in the bedroom.
Slit Matched Cabinet and Bookshelves
One of the more complicated builds in the house is in the guest room, where we built this very technical cabinet (and it looks so simple!) There’s a bookcase on the side and hanging storage in the main part of the cabinet. There’s a lift up door on the top and the entire cabinet is sequenced white oak to get the continuous grain from the ceiling to the floor. Getting the tight tolerance to the ceiling was an important part of the build. The handles are all back cut to be gentle when opening the doors and drawers.
Steel Upper Cabinets and Kitchen Niche
In the kitchen we built the steel upper cabinets and the HPL (high pressure laminate) white cabinets and wood panel to capture both our cabinets and the kitchen cabinets. You can also see a closer view of the channels for the LED lights that move into the living room.
Reclaimed Redwood
We built four benches on the property of out reclaimed firetower redwood that’s finished in charcoal oil.