Del Mar kitchens, and what the ocean does to them

This site covers one town. We repair Sub-Zero built-in appliances across Del Mar: the 92014 coast, the village below the tracks, Olde Del Mar, Beach Colony, Spindrift, Del Mar Woods, Rancho Del Mar, and out past Flower Hill toward the San Dieguito Lagoon. Refrigerators, freezer columns, wine cabinets, ice machines and undercounter drawers, plus the Classic, Designer and PRO Series tune-ups that keep all of it out of trouble. The line is answered around the clock, every day of the year, on (858) 290-7997.

Del Mar is a corrosion town, not a heat town. The marine layer carries salt in off the water and it settles on the one component in a built-in that has to breathe: the condenser behind the grille — up top on a full-size built-in, down at the toe kick on an undercounter unit. Salt film holds moisture, and moisture glues lint and pet hair onto the aluminum fins, so a shop vacuum at the grille slides straight over the top of it. What we find on a house near the beach is a coil that looks open from the front and is packed solid an inch in, with the fins going chalky where the aluminum has started to give up.

There are really two appliance populations here, and the tracks divide them. Down in the village, around Powerhouse Park, Seagrove Park and Del Mar Plaza, the houses are older and the built-ins usually sit in cabinetry that was reworked around them, sometimes more than once. Clearance at the grille is tight, the fronts are heavy custom panels, and the hinge is carrying more weight than it was sized for. On the newer streets inland, out toward Flower Hill and the San Dieguito Lagoon, the construction is newer and so is the equipment: refrigerator and freezer as separate columns, wine storage as its own cabinet, ice made by a machine under the counter rather than in a freezer door. Different generations, different parts on the van.