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.

The thing that I love most about this house is also the thing that has caused me the most stress (and damage, and money), up until just recently: The beautiful west facing California sunlight. It made the house unbearably hot in the afternoon (almost year round), and it bleached out all furniture, textiles and wood in a very bad, sad way . . . until I met LLumar.

From what many of you have told me styling your bookshelves is as hard for you as filing for taxes is for me – daunting and stressful, where you aren’t sure where to start and you are sure it will never end. But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and maximizing your shelving for whatever purpose bests suits your home, whether that be storage, housing your collections, or a place to actually hold all your books, is something that everyone can achieve in a few easy steps. I promise.