You: Who are you for?

Me: Everyone has something they really care about — something they enjoy knowing more about simply because it matters to them.  It’s important.  It’s fun.  Maybe it's cars, food, travel, or something else.  When you have a deep interest, details that seem excessive to someone else become interesting — and expertise becomes valuable.

That's how I feel about kitchens.

My clients care about them too, although their reasons vary. Some love to cook or entertain. Some are particularly sensitive to how a space makes them feel. Others just like to get important investments right.

If your kitchen is (more or less) just a room where you cook and hang out — and that’s totally OK — there are easier and less expensive ways to get a perfectly good one.

But if kitchens really matter, we'll probably have a lot to talk about.

You: Lots of designers really care about kitchens.  What is your distinction?

Me: I came to kitchen design by an unusual route. I'm a systems thinker. I read a lot. I considered becoming an architect but chickened out and got a tech-related MBA instead, believing it to be more practical. When the tech bubble burst, I pivoted into residential design.

Coming from tech, I was struck by how much the kitchen industry still reflected its origins.  Kitchen design grew up around selling cabinets, and much of the industry still reflects that history.  Meanwhile, the client's world has changed enormously. Today we have nearly unlimited access to products, images, information and increasingly the tools to design things ourselves.

That's useful.  It's also overwhelming.  Increasingly, the value of service is judgment: knowing what matters, what doesn’t, how to implement ideas, how to get the most out of those ideas, and what is right for this particular person and place.  That's the part of the job that interests me most.

So I've structured my business to protect time for thought.  I want to understand how my clients live, what matters to them, how their lives may change, and what they're trying to accomplish so that the right answer is revealed rather than assumed.  Technology can help enormously with this work.  But I want to use the efficiency it creates to think better, not just move faster.

And because the right answer rarely stops at the cabinets, neither do I.  I can bring that same depth of thought to the whole room.

Of course, that's only part of the story. Like everyone else, I also bring a point of view.

You: OK, what is your point of view?

Me: It is my homepage message:  balance design studio creates mindful, joyful spaces.

Mindful, to some extent, involves the thought behind an excellent outcome, as I just explained.  It also means looking beyond the immediate outcome. Materials come from somewhere. They're made of something. They change over time and with use. So do the people who use them and the spaces they occupy. And in the end, materials go somewhere when we're finished with them.  I value solutions that don’t ignore this bigger picture. 

All this thought is in service of joy.

You: “Joy?”  That sounds a little hokey.  What do you mean by that?

Me: We live in a culture that is remarkably good at making us aware of what we don't have — and then selling us something to fix it. I understand the desire to retreat into homes that feel quiet and perfect. But calm isn't the same thing as flourishing.

Joy can be color, pattern, nature, things made by human hands, cooking with friends, pets underfoot, and objects collected over decades. Joy isn't a look.  It's evidence of real life.  A good home shouldn't merely soothe us from the life we're living.  It should help us live it well.   

I use a design lens that I call the BASICS to look for opportunities to bring joy into a room: nature, art and craft, adaptable materials, useful innovation, color and personality, and choices that don't depend on fashion to remain relevant.

You: What is it like to work with you?

Me: It is collaborative. My clients bring their own ideas, preferences and experience to the project, and I bring mine. Some clients want me to narrow the possibilities and make a recommendation. Others arrive with strong ideas and want me to help them understand the pros and cons. Often, what they need from me evolves as the project unfolds.

My job isn't to impose my taste anymore than it is to simply execute yours.  It is to help you get more out of the effort than you can currently imagine.  To do that, I listen carefully and bring my judgment to the decisions where it's useful. Sometimes that means challenging an idea. Sometimes it means saying, “You've got this.”

That same collaborative approach extends beyond client relationships to my relationships with the trades.

Maine is a relatively small community.  That matters in the approach.  When half the people on the project (maybe more) know each other, a Big Business approach doesn’t work.  Here, a kitchen is an Us endeavor, not an endeavor of Thems.  Everyone brings something important to the project.  Here, clear communication, trust and respect aren't just nice ways to work — they’re how you get the best results.

I collaborate with and learn from my colleagues in the trade to give them what they need so that the thinking behind the design follows through construction.

You: What can I hire you to do, exactly?

Me: I am a kitchen specialist, so I have the technical kitchen and cabinetry depth you'd expect from a kitchen designer. But my service isn't limited to planning the layout and selling cabinets and counters.

I can design all the materials in the room as a cohesive whole, or I can help just where I’m needed most. I can also help with other spaces when that makes sense.  Kitchens are my specialty; my scope depends on the project and the people.