By Robin Rigby Fisher What I love about designing is the challenge of creating function where it didn’t previously exist. When I first entered this home, the kitchen was generic: oak cabinets with white Corian countertops. The island was small — not enough counter space where it was needed, and too much where it wasn’t. The home, which was built in the mid-1980s, featured three eating areas (eating bar for four, breakfast table, and formal dining) all within 20 feet of each other — standard... more

Funny thing about houses — they don’t comprehend that the economy is less than stellar. They still need regular maintenance. January is my time for organizing, cleaning closets, tidying cabinets, and overall rearranging. This creates lots of opportunities to notice all the things I want to fix and update in our home. Unfortunately, with the holidays just finishing and a tight budget, much of our home improvements may need to be put on the back burner for a while. However, I do have a few options... more

Once upon a time the kitchen was a room only for servants. In fact in many homes, the kitchen was not even part of the main house. With the rise of the middle class, the kitchen moved into the home, but was still reserved for the servant, now called the “little woman.” Jumping a few decades and the ERA: When “the little woman” went to work and both mom and dad started sharing in the kitchen duties, the new kitchen appeared. When choosing fabric for your upholstered furniture, be painfully... more

One of my favorite things to do at the end of a long day is to relax in a long hot shower. As one who, as a child, was taught the environmental benefits of a “military shower,” the occasional long hot shower is a luxury to me. Unfortunately the long shower sometimes becomes an opportunity to notice just how badly my shower needs to be redone. Yes, the old adage about the “cobbler’s kids needing shoes” does translate perfectly to a designer’s home. My house was built in... more

The kitchen can be the most challenging room to light. Your surfaces need to be bright enough to be able to see where you are chopping, soft and inviting for conversation and midnight snacking, and in many cases, available to show off collections or family heirlooms. Accent lighting, task lighting, and ambient lighting work together to create the right amount of lighting for your kitchen! Hockey puck lighting is used inside the glass front cabinets for display. Here we used halogen lamps... more

The Arts & Crafts or Craftsman movement came to the U.S. from England around the early 1900s as a reaction to the “soulless machine-made production” of the Industrial Revolution with the belief that aesthetics would help society to be more “rational and harmonious.” Many tile artisans considered the machine as the cause of “repetitive and mundane evils” and encouraged the movement towards handcraft work. The goal was for more authentic design and decoration. Design elements of this... more

One of my biggest pet peeves is when professional designers use “Modern” and “Contemporary” interchangeably. In fact; they are two completely different design styles. Modern: 1935 to 1985 It is commonly believed that Modernism grew as a reaction to the “lavish stylistic excesses of the Victorian Era and Edwardian Art Nouveau” periods. This is the movement of “form follows function” and the house as “a machine for living in.” Although commercial architects broadly embraced this... more

I am not one to push or tout trends. My belief is that your home should reflect you, your family, your lifestyle, and the way you live in your home. The reality is, as consumers we tend to want a lot of the same things. What’s new in the kitchen for 2010? Not surprisingly, the trends lean toward products that are environmentally responsible and multi-functional, appliances that promote healthy, fresh food preparation, and kitchens that are designed to accommodate personal technology devices. The... more