I’m curious to know how you got from a small Minnesota town like Cokato, to a spot onDesign Star. Can you give us a little synopsis on what that journey was? So, I grew up in Cokato, up until I was 14 and right before
SEVEN SURE FIRE WAYS TO HELP DESIGN A ROOM:
1. Be realistic with your budget and stick to
it.Being on a budget doesn’t mean the design has to suffer. I found my most strict budgets produce the most creative outcomes.
2. Create a design board.Whether it’s on Pinterest or in a binder, gives a clear vision of your space and the elements you are inspired by at your fingertips.
3. Do a space plan before you go out shopping!This is a crucial thing to do before you head out the door looking for that perfect piece. Take measurements of your space and figure out how big the furniture should be. You don’t want to come home with a sofa that completely over takes the room or one that is far too small. It takes the guess work out of, “I wonder if it will fit...”
4. Take measurements of your doorways, halls and stairways to determine if you can fit that piece into the room easily. Again, I’ve been there, I custom made a headboard for a very large bedroom, it was perfect! But then I tried to bring it up the stairs and it wouldn’t fit. #lessonlearned (cont. next page)
my 15th birthday we moved to a suburb of Minneapolis called Plymouth and I went to Wayzata High School there. Wayzata High School, I love it, I have friends with kids there still. (Laughs) I know, very 90210 [It’s where Brandon and Brenda Walsh moved from onBeverly Hills 90210], though on the show they pronounced it Wayzayta, they never got that right. (Laughs) Anyway, that’s where I finished off my high school years. I went to art school in Sarasota, Florida at the Wringling Brother’s College of Art & Design, because I wanted to be a Disney animator. That was back in the day when they still did hand-drawn animation. After I was there for a few months I realized that I really did not want to do animation, because it was kind of boring for me. Drawing a broomstick over and over and over again in order to make it move for five seconds, was going to take me weeks and weeks. It was awful and I was like, “I just can’t.” (Laughs) I finished my education and moved to Orlando, then
ended up working with Disney again, though not in any sort of animation capacity. Disney was a client of mine, I did windows and visual merchandising for quite a while. I basically had my own business and then started doing kids fantasy bedrooms and model homes around the Southeast. I was barely scrubbing two pennies together, but I was doing what I wanted to do. I was being creative, making my own hours, having my own clients. Did I struggle? Yes. Did I nearly go bankrupt doing it? Yes. (Laughs) It definitely had that “starving artist” quality to it, with high, highs and super, super lows, but it all ended up working out. I loved what I was doing, making furniture, making props
and murals and designing interiors, it was a lot of fun and I was proud of them. One of my interior designer friends told me that I should do a television show that she had heard of called, Design Star on HGTV. I thought she was nuts, but she convinced me to apply and got on. I had no intention of winning, I didn’t think of myself as an interior designer at the time, but I thought, “What the
hell...Then I ended up winning the thing.” (Laughs) I’m pretty obsessed with DIY and design shows. I actually remember watchingDesign Star and you winning the competition. Were you having as much fun as it looked? Yes. I had so much fun doing that, but I really wasn’t prepared to win. Even the executives for the show told me later, “We did not peg you to be the winner.” They sort of had me on the show as their token gay guy. I sent my audition tape and sort of messed it up and they cut it in a par- ticular way, then used it to make me look sort of bitchy. It
SEPTEMBER 2017 | RAGE monthly 27
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