Project Reveal: A Carlsbad Village Chocolate shop gets a sweet makeover!
/Carlsbad Village is an iconic SoCal seaside community in San Diego packed with cute boutiques, hip restaurants and of course at the Chocolate Bar, you’ll find sweet treats. When the owner called in mid-August to start construction just after Labor Day, I admittedly had a small panic. How on earth could I pull together design that quickly? She assured me the family run business would help out and with that we hit the ground running.
Our design approach was simple, really:
Create a clean, inviting coastal shop.
THE VISION + THE ELEMENTS
So, I don’t normally show before photos until the end of our posts, but I really want you guys to see what we were working with. The current owner had inherited the shop and it’s contents when she purchased it a couple of years ago. Everything was brown. I mean everything. Well except for the popcorn ceiling.
So, with our new color palette and the elements identified we began to hammer the floor, remove the popcorn ceiling and halogen lighting, refinish the cabinets and the candy cases and design our Instagram wall.
All of the existing shelving, tables and cabinetry were removed so we could start fresh. Our punch list included a new Front of House flow and aesthetic, display for candy, new Back of House space for more chocolate making capacity - YAY and future classes plus an employee break space
One of the biggest changes we made were to the existing cabinets which you can see above. They were black and brown and heavy and bulky. The first thing we did was remove the formica countertop and the brown bar between the black panels. Then we sprayed the whole cabinet Dunn Edwards Igloo, created a faux wood finish in sections between the new white panels and added a quartz countertop. We saved thousands of dollars by refinishing the cabinets rather than having new ones built.
Check out the remodel video showing the BEFORES and AFTERS below!
Hope you’ve enjoyed following along and if you’re reading for the first time then, WELCOME to Terra Sol Interiors. We like to cover our projects on our Blog so readers can feel the full experience of our renovation journeys.
Doing our best to illuminate life through design.
Love,
Terra
