Meet the Family Behind Cabinet IQ of Pleasanton

Meet the Owners

Jerry and Cheryl Rathje, Owners

Cheryl Rathje grew up in San Francisco's East Bay, and Jerry Rathje on an Iowa farm. They met in Colorado while serving in the Army, both of them working in medicine. When their service ended they moved back to the Bay Area, built careers in healthcare, and raised their three children. In 2012 they found their dream home, a 1974 double A-frame on a canyon road, five thousand square feet under glass, with wooded hills on every side and a creek at the back. The structure was sound, but the interior was beyond saving, so they gutted it and spent the next several years rebuilding. Very few people would take that on. Fewer would do it themselves. What surprised them most was how much came down to small things: how the light landed at four in the afternoon, how the wood ceilings read against the concrete floors, how softly a drawer closed in a room of glass and stone. By the time the house was done, most people would have been relieved to stop — Cheryl and Jerry wanted to keep going. Cabinet IQ came out of that. Their careers in healthcare shaped how they work: thoughtful listening, hearing what someone means when they cannot yet articulate it, and making sure they know they've been heard. Most people arrive with a phone full of saved images and no clear way to explain what they love about them, so drawing that out is the first work, and the most important. Cheryl and Jerry are joined by Project Manager Trent Marek, a partner in the business and a second-generation woodworker with twenty years in the trade. Through Cabinet IQ, they are doing for other people's homes what they once did for their own — creating spaces nobody forgets walking into.