Adding a wine cellar sounds like the kind of investment that would only make sense in a grand residence- and there are certainly some gorgeous wine cellars in some of Portland’s most gracious homes.

Not everybody has that kind of square footage, of course. Is it possible to carve out a little piece of luxury when all you have to work with is a clean and dry corner of a bungalow basement?

This was the question we hoped to answer as part of our Wine Cellar Giveaway collaboration with Portland Monthly. Our wine cellar winner had a wonderful collection of French and Northwest wines… and absolutely nowhere to store it or display it.

Could Arciform Designer Jeffrey Kelly take this dry but unappealing corner of their basement and turn it into a stylish and functional temperature-controlled wine cellar?

Our first step was to devise a modular, flexible storage rack system that could handle different bottle sizes and shapes (including Magnums) while maintaining a clean and consistent look.

As an additional challenge, we looked for a design that would make use of off-cuts from our custom wood shop, removing waste from the waste stream and re-purposing it in a practical and beautiful way.

The solution: A series of modular rack components constructed from pieces of reclaimed clear vertical grain fir that were salvaged from our custom window manufacture process.

The racks were installed on two walls, providing an extraordinary amount of bottle storage in a tight footprint. Salvaged wood paneling along the accent wall tied the space together while a WhisperKool air conditioning unit keeps the space at the optimum temperature for storing wine. A small wine fridge keeps whites chilled.