Meet Olya
Most clients come to me overwhelmed by choices. My job is to make those decisions clear and confident — before you spend on cabinetry.
MBA · MIT Sloan · Psychologist · 30 years leading complex projects & renovations
Objective kitchen & space planning before construction begins.
Most clients come to me overwhelmed by choices. My job is to make those decisions clear and confident — before you spend on cabinetry.
MBA · MIT Sloan · Psychologist · 30 years leading complex projects & renovations
Most regret in a kitchen comes from choices made under pressure. We slow that moment down — clarifying tone, finish, and flow before anything is ordered.
Cabinets don't live in showrooms. Every recommendation is calibrated to your light, your existing rooms, and the way your household actually moves.
A trained eye for material harmony — the kind that makes a space feel composed rather than catalogued. Restrained, layered, intentional.
A turnkey purchase on the St. Pete Beach shoreline. The client came with a simple brief: replace the kitchen cabinetry. What emerged — once the architecture was properly read — was something larger: a complete transformation of the entire residence, bringing a space of genuine bones finally into conversation with the Gulf it faces.
The mandate became larger than the kitchen: bring the entire residence forward by twenty years, make 8'3" ceilings feel taller than they are, and let the Gulf become the only thing in the room that draws the eye.
The architecture had character — a stacked-stone column, layered ceilings, an unobstructed Gulf horizon — but the kitchen worked against it. A mirrored mosaic backsplash competed with the water. A freestanding refrigerator broke the sightline. White shaker fronts and farmhouse fittings belonged to another decade. The stone column on the dining-room side held a single hung painting — a decorative gesture on what was otherwise a blind wall.
The coffered ceiling already existed — but in a heavy, traditional vocabulary, with deep beams interrupted by extra mouldings around the columns. At 8'3", it pressed the room down. We squared and slimmed every beam, recentered the entire grid to the new architecture, replaced white paint with rift-cut white oak for warmth and texture, and introduced continuous LED coves where there had only been flat recessed lights. A subtle accent over the bar now articulates a zone that previously had none.
The existing stacked-stone column stayed — but it became an anchor instead of a stranger. Its tone now echoes through the quartzite countertops and the surrounding palette. On the dining-room face, where there had only been a hung painting on a blind wall, we cut the stone and built in a custom display bar: oak-framed, smoked-glass doors, blackened interior, internal LED lighting. Decorative gesture replaced with a functional, architectural one.
The original quartz — patterned, stain-prone, dated — was replaced with full-slab quartzite: stain-resistant, sealant-free, monolithic. The all-white cabinetry gave way to rift-cut white oak for warmth, paired with cabinetry in Alabaster — gloss on the upper run, matte on the two flanking towers.
The refrigerator that once broke the sightline now lives behind a matte Alabaster column. Its twin — an appliance garage — quietly absorbs the coffee machine, toaster and small electrics that used to crowd the counter — housing a full-size microwave and a concealed wine refrigerator, completely invisible from the main space. The dishwasher, induction cooktop, microwave drawer and two wine refrigerators are all integrated. The hood disappears into cabinetry.
The high-gloss Alabaster on the upper run is not decorative. During daylight hours, it reflects the water — pulling the view inward, doubling it across the kitchen wall. Layered LED beneath the cabinetry handles task light by day and a low ambient glow at night.
The dining-room face of the existing stone column — once a blind wall with a single hung painting — now houses a custom-built bar: oak-framed cabinetry recessed into the stone, smoked-glass doors, a blackened interior under warm LED. The column finally belongs to the room.
The full sweep at sunset — dining, bar column, living room and the Gulf beyond. The coffered ceiling anchors the scale; the orbital chandelier marks the threshold between spaces.
This is a weekend home — a place its owner comes to forget her week. My task wasn't to design a beautiful kitchen. It was to turn the entire residence into the kind of personal spa-and-boutique-hotel she would choose over any hotel she could fly to. Six months in, that's what it has become.
— Olya Egorov, Alchemy Architectural & Interior Design
This is a large project — but the thinking behind it scales down just as easily as it scales up. Concealed appliances, layered light, material restraint, the discipline of letting one thing in the room be the hero — these decisions belong as much to a compact condo kitchen as to a 2,400 sq ft residence. Size sets the budget. It does not set the level of design.
An hour with a designer — at the showroom or in your home — answering the questions samples can't.
Not selection — composition. A documented palette where every material works with the architecture of your home, not against it.
How the kitchen actually works. The hidden architecture behind a beautiful elevation.
A complete concept for the kitchen — including everything in services 02 and 03 — extended into the living and dining areas it opens onto. One language, one palette, one resolved space.
A complete design vision for an entire residence — the scope of the project shown above. Architecture, materials, furniture, lighting, smart home and styling, in one resolved language.
MBA · MIT Sloan · Psychologist · 30 years leading complex projects & renovations
I didn't come to design through architecture school. I came to it through thirty years in business — through renovating my own homes more than once, and through building a professionally outfitted wine cellar with full climate and inventory systems for my company.
Along the way I noticed something simple. The difference between a beautiful home and a forgettable one is rarely the budget. It's the decisions made in the first two weeks — and most of those decisions are made under pressure, by people who have never been taught to make them.
Alchemy is the practice I built around that observation. I work on kitchens of every scale — from compact condos to whole-home renovations — with the same attention and the same process.
Olya Egorov, Founder · Alchemy Architectural & Interior Design