I was once asked what inspired me to follow my career path. Inspiration? Well, my mother may be the one to credit for that. She always seemed to have a natural instinct for decorating the house. I remember how the seasonal curtains and slipcovers would disappear, replaced with a new look for winter.
My sister and I would help arrange my mother’s collectibles, which were put away and brought back out depending on the seasonal theme—mostly items from my parents’ travels and such. That probably inspired me, too, to do the kinds of things that I was drawn to.
Later in life, I would get inspiration from my own travels. But when I was only 13 years old, my sister, who was two years older, and I were allowed to choose all the paint colors, wall coverings, and fabrics for our new house. So, I started decorating at a very young age, and I think we did a really good job.
My sister Beth and me as kids
My sisters (Kathleen, Beth, Susan) and me, all grown up
But then I grew up to become an RN like my mother. Later in life, when I was married, I renovated with my husband. We sold each of three homes very easily, moving to larger homes as our family grew. Even back then I was always designing my homes.
We bought an old English Tudor from the turn of the century. The kitchen was a disaster. We gutted it and made this beautiful kitchen that I loved so much! It was brand new but I wanted it to look like it could have been the original, with the brick tile floor and blue and white Portuguese tile counter and backsplash. It did! Our whole family practically lived in this space for 20 years, eating, doing homework, even playing video games on the little TV tucked in the corner.
Photos of our kitchen hang in each of my daughters’ homes as a fond memory.
I have three daughters. And when entertaining, our guests would always want to tour the whole house. They’d go upstairs and peek into the girls’ rooms, and that’s why I always said, “You have to get your room neat! Company’s coming.”
I knew that’s what people would do, and they always were delighted with what they saw. And after about 800 people were touring my house for a charity event, House Tour, many of them went home, brought their husbands, and came back again! It was crazy.
So many of them wanted me to design their homes. Then I thought, well, I’m not just going to decorate people’s homes. I decided to become a professional. So I finally enrolled in design school—the New York School of Interior Design in New York City.
Funny enough, I ended up making a rendering of my wonderful kitchen as an assignment for design school. I sketched it in pencil first, then completed the rendering with various ink pens. It still hangs in my home in Florida.
One of my first assignments at NYSID was to capture my favorite kitchen in ink.
That’s the story of what inspired my career, and the rest is history. Decades later, I’m still working my magic on residential and commercial spaces.
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