Kitchen Remodeling Under Beam Ceilings, Palm Springs
In a post-and-beam house the roof is the attic, the posts carry the load and the clerestory glass sits where your upper cabinets want to go. Radar58 plans kitchen remodels around what the structure allows before anyone picks a cabinet color.
What moves, what stays, and what it costs when a Palm Springs kitchen sits under exposed beams and clerestory glass.
September 13, 2026
If you own a mid-century house in Palm Springs, you probably bought it at least partly for the ceiling. Exposed beams running out toward the backyard, warm wood decking overhead, and a strip of clerestory glass that pulls daylight into the middle of the house. Then you stand in the kitchen, which was designed for the way people cooked when the house was new, and start imagining what it could be.
This is the conversation we have more than any other on first visits. The owner has a picture in mind, usually a big island facing the patio, tall cabinets to the ceiling and a grid of recessed lights, and the house has a different opinion about several of those things. None of that means you cannot have a great kitchen. It means the order of decisions matters, and the first decision is understanding what the structure will let you change.
Here is how we explain it, piece by piece.
Most houses built in the same years elsewhere use stud walls and roof rafters, with an attic in between. The walls hold up the roof more or less everywhere along their length, and the attic gives electricians and duct installers a place to work.
A post-and-beam house works differently. Heavy beams span the width of the room and rest on posts, and the roof deck, often tongue-and-groove boards, lies directly across the beams. The underside of that deck is your ceiling. The top of it is under your roofing. The load goes from the deck to the beams, from the beams to the posts, and from the posts down to footings in or under the slab.
That arrangement is why so many Palm Springs homes, including the tracts the Alexander Construction Company built in neighborhoods like Twin Palms and Racquet Club Estates, could have walls of glass and open living areas. The walls between posts do not have to hold up the roof, so they can be glass, sliding doors or light framed panels. It is also why the rest of this article exists.
A post is a load path. Taking one out means the beam above it suddenly spans twice as far, and it was not sized for that. It can be done, with a larger beam or a steel member and new footings, but that is structural redesign with an engineer, a permit, temporary shoring and a meaningful cost. For almost every kitchen we work on, the posts stay, and the design makes them look like they belong.
That is not as limiting as it sounds. A post can mark the end of a peninsula. It can sit inside a tall cabinet run so it disappears. It can frame an opening between the kitchen and the dining area. What does not work well is an island built around a post, because the post ends up exactly where you want to chop vegetables.
You cannot drop a beam to make room for something, and you should not notch one to run a pipe or a wire through it. The ceiling line is also fixed in practical terms. You can build a soffit below it, but you cannot raise it, and any new opening in the decking is a roof penetration that has to be flashed and sealed.
This one is less a thing than a lack of a thing, and it catches more people than anything else. There is no cavity above your kitchen. That affects three parts of the remodel directly: lighting, new wiring and ventilation. We will come back to each.
The wall that separates many of these kitchens from the living room is often simple infill. If it is, it can come out, and the change in how the house feels is usually dramatic. But it is worth being careful with the word often. Some walls hold diagonal bracing or plywood sheathing that keeps the house from racking sideways. Some hide a post that a previous owner framed in. Some carry a beam splice. We look before we promise, sometimes by cutting a small inspection opening, and when there is any question a structural engineer reviews it. A permit through the City of Palm Springs covers the work either way.
Cabinet runs, counters, appliance positions and islands are all movable. The limits come from the plumbing, the gas line and the electrical supply rather than from the cabinets themselves. A range can often move a few feet if the gas line can follow it. A refrigerator can move to wherever there is a receptacle and, for an ice maker, a water line.
The sink is movable in principle, and the price depends on how far. Many of these houses sit on a concrete slab with drain lines running beneath it. Sliding the sink along the same wall may only mean opening the wall and adjusting the line. Moving it into a new island means saw cutting the slab, breaking out a channel, laying a new drain at a proper slope and tying it in, then patching concrete and flooring. That can add thousands of dollars and several days, and it is worth doing only when the layout truly needs it.
Our honest advice is to price the island sink and the wall sink side by side before deciding. A lot of the time, a prep sink is not needed, the main sink works where it is, and the island becomes a clean work and gathering surface.
Clerestory windows are the band of glass along the top of a wall, just under the roofline. In beam houses they often sit between beams or directly on a header, and the glass is frequently fixed rather than operable.
They set a hard ceiling for upper cabinets on any wall where they appear. A standard kitchen plan that runs uppers to the ceiling would cover the glass, darken the room and look strange from outside. So on window walls we design shorter uppers that stop below the sill, open shelves that keep the glass readable, or no uppers at all.
The storage has to go somewhere, and the best place is usually a full-height cabinet or pantry wall on a side of the kitchen without windows. A single wall of tall cabinets with pull-out shelves holds more than most people expect, and it keeps the window walls light.
Changing the clerestories themselves is a separate question. Replacing old single pane glass with dual pane, low emissivity glass can make a real difference to summer heat gain in a kitchen, and in most cases it fits into the existing openings. Enlarging, closing or moving a clerestory is a structural and exterior change, and if the house carries a historic designation it may need review before a permit. We tell people to find out early whether their home has a designation, because it can change the schedule.
The standard answer to kitchen lighting is a grid of recessed cans. In a beam house there is nowhere to put them. Cutting holes in exposed decking compromises the roof, exposes the insulation above and spoils the ceiling you love. So we use other tools, and the results are usually better.
A dropped soffit can hide a few lights over a specific area, and occasionally that is the right move, especially along a wall with no glass. It lowers part of the ceiling, so we treat it as a trade off to discuss rather than a starting point.
A modern kitchen needs more circuits than a mid-century one was built with. Current practice calls for at least two small appliance circuits at the counters, dedicated circuits for the dishwasher, the disposal and a built-in microwave, GFCI protection at counter receptacles and AFCI protection in the kitchen. An induction cooktop adds a large 240 volt circuit.
Two questions follow. First, can the panel handle it? Many older Palm Springs homes still have a small original service, and if an induction range is on the list, the panel is checked before the range is chosen. Second, how does the wire get there? Without an attic, new circuits run through the walls that are open during the remodel, under the cabinets or in conduit set into the slab during other concrete work. When an infill wall comes out, that is the moment to run everything the kitchen will need, because once the walls are finished the options shrink to surface conduit, and surface conduit across a beam is not what anyone wants to look at.
A range hood should vent outside. Recirculating hoods catch some grease and run the air through a filter, but they do not remove heat, moisture or cooking byproducts from the house, and in a Palm Springs summer the last thing a kitchen needs is to keep its heat.
In a beam house, ducting outside means going straight up through the decking and out through the roof. The duct needs a proper roof jack, and on a low slope roof the flashing has to be done carefully or it will leak during the first monsoon storm. We bring in a roofer for that part. A bigger hood can also trigger a make-up air requirement once it passes roughly 400 CFM under many codes, which means a damper and another opening to plan. We size the hood to the cooktop and the room rather than reaching for the highest number.
Condos are the exception people need to hear about early. In many complexes the association controls the roof, and a new penetration needs approval or is not allowed. If a ducted hood truly is not possible, we will say so and explain what a recirculating model can and cannot do.
Two local conditions shape the finish choices and the calendar more than people expect.
Coachella Valley water is very hard. It leaves scale on faucets, clouds glassware and shortens the life of dishwashers and instant hot water taps. During a remodel, with the sink wall open, it is easy to add a loop for a water softener or a dedicated filter, and it is worth choosing faucet finishes and sink materials that hide mineral spots rather than show them.
The heat affects the work itself. When afternoons run well over 110 degrees, demolition and loud work start at first light, deliveries come in the morning, and materials like adhesives, drywall compound and countertop sealers are handled with the house cooled. A lot of our clients, especially owners of vacation rentals with frequent turnover, prefer to schedule the remodel between seasons, and planning that early makes it far easier to hold the dates.
For a beam house kitchen the sequence we follow looks like this:
Expect to live without a working kitchen for most of that time. A temporary setup in the laundry room or on the patio, with a microwave, a hot plate and a folding table, makes the weeks much easier.
When the structure is understood, the budget usually sorts itself out. The expensive items in a beam house are the structural ones: moving a post, relocating a sink through the slab, a new panel and service, a roof duct through a condo roof. The good value items are the ones that improve the room without touching structure: a smarter cabinet layout, better lighting, a vented hood, new counters and a softer water supply.
If you are deciding where to spend, start with the things you use every day. Light you can cook by, a sink in a sensible spot and enough room to pass behind the person at the stove. Then decide whether the big structural changes are worth it on top of that. Sometimes they are. Often the kitchen that keeps the posts, keeps the glass clear and keeps the sink where it is turns out to be the one that fits the house best.
If you would like us to walk your kitchen and map what can move, call (442) 718-1030. Send a few photos of the ceiling and the wall behind your sink first, and we can usually tell you a lot before we arrive.
Two kinds of work make or break a mid-century kitchen: where things go, and how they get power and light without an attic above them.
We map posts, beams and slab plumbing first, then draw layouts that respect them. Aisle widths of 42 to 48 inches, a working sink to range to refrigerator path, and islands that sit clear of the posts rather than wrapped around them.
Many beam houses have a wall between the kitchen and living room that carries no roof load. Where a structural engineer confirms that, it can come out. Where it does carry load, we say so and design around it.
Dedicated circuits for the dishwasher, disposal and microwave, two small appliance circuits at the counter, GFCI and AFCI protection, and a panel check before anyone orders an induction range.
Pendants on surface boxes, fixtures mounted to the sides of beams, LED under-cabinet strips and indirect light washed across the decking. Wire routes are chosen so the ceiling does not end up with conduit stapled across it.
Ducting a hood outside means a roof penetration, which means proper flashing on a low slope roof. We coordinate it with a roofer and tell you early if a condo board or the house itself makes that hard.
Lower upper cabinets, open shelving that keeps the glass readable, and tall storage moved to walls without windows. The goal is to keep the light the house was designed around.
Radar58 remodels kitchens in Palm Springs, and most of the houses we work in were built the same way: exposed beams resting on posts, tongue-and-groove decking that is both the ceiling you look at and the roof deck above it, and a band of clerestory windows tucked up under the roofline. It is a beautiful way to build a house. It is also a way of building that quietly rules out half of what a standard kitchen remodel assumes you can do, and the trouble usually starts when a plan drawn for a tract house with an attic gets handed to a mid-century one without one.
The problems show up in predictable places. There is no attic, so there is nowhere to hide a recessed light, a new circuit or a hood duct. The walls between posts may be simple infill or may be doing more work than they look like, and nobody should guess which. Supply and drain lines often run in or under the concrete slab, which makes moving a sink a concrete job rather than a plumbing job. And the clerestory glass that makes the room feel open sits exactly at the height where a tall run of upper cabinets would go. None of that is a reason not to remodel. It is a reason to find out what can move before you fall in love with a drawing.
So we start with the building. We look at which posts land where, which beams carry the roof, where the slab has plumbing in it, what the electrical panel can actually supply, and whether a hood can be vented through the roof without a leak or a design review. Then we design the kitchen that fits, and we tell you plainly which parts of the wish list are cheap, which are expensive, and which would mean changing the house itself. Sometimes the right answer is to keep the sink where it is, keep the glass clear, and spend the money on lighting and cabinets instead.
Palm Springs kitchen remodels are priced mostly by how much of the structure you ask to change. Keeping plumbing and posts where they are costs far less than cutting slab, rerouting a roof duct or taking out a wall that turns out to carry load. These ranges are typical, and the real number comes after the site walkthrough.
Beam ceilings turn up all over the city, from the Alexander Construction Company tracts to hillside custom houses and the condo complexes built in the same years.
Call (442) 718-1030 and send a few photos of your ceiling and the wall above your sink. That tells us most of what we need before a site visit.
Before you buy cabinets or sign off on a drawing, let us walk the house and tell you which posts, beams, pipes and circuits you are working with. It takes about an hour, and it is the part of the job that stops a mid-century kitchen from turning into a change order. Call and we will set a time, early in the day if it is summer.