A couple of months ago I had a rather interesting kitchen design challenge, with a capital C. I was hired by LG to promote their new Black Stainless Steel series at an editors event in New York – that wasn’t the challenging part. The challenging part came later (keep reading). The ask: Design a kitchen on Pinterest then, weeks later, install said kitchen in one day/night in an event space, in New York (with lots of help from a strong design/build team). It was insane, and was full of fixable bumps and exciting problems to solve.

Progress has been made in the guest room and I’d say its 72% done. It’s certainly habitable, but since I’m trying to make every room in my house/life a portfolio piece it’s not quite there yet. Let’s recap and break it down… When we bought the house this room was a terrifying mess – totally unfinished, full of storage, with layers of carpet. It’s about 400 square feet and we knew that we wanted to utilize that space.

Many of us want (or have) all white kitchens. It’s certainly the trend of the decade, and for good reason – it feels big, open, and easy to manage. The more color, pattern, and style contrast that you bring in to any space, the busier it feels. Kitchens already get really busy with people and sometimes those people actually “cook” with “ingredients” and produce “meals.” Doing such a thing can REALLY make a kitchen messy, and therefore even busier. So yea, I understand starting out white. But if you have a white kitchen and you want more style for either a special occasion, or just to look pretty on an everyday basis, we came up with some tips to help.

As only truly insane people would do (IE, me) the whole family is headed to Australia in a couple of weeks. Brian’s company was hired to do a few videos there and I’ve always wanted to go – mostly for design, but also for vacation. Part of me wants to just hang out, write, and be with the kids and the other part of me wants to really utilize my time to make connection, have book signings, create Australian content, do a makeover and really connect with any and all readers there.