italian home kitchen design

hi. i'm mary dewalt. i'm president of mary dewalt design groupand we specialize in model home merchandising for new home builders. we're in the kitchen of a jimmy jacobs modelhome in the austin, texas area. and i just wanted to talk a little bit aboutsome of the trends that we're seeing in kitchens today. kitchens are probably the most important roomin the house to so many people. it's the heart of the home.

everybody, you know, congregates here. and so one of the first trends that we'reseeing, is instead of having the bar raised up to 42 inches for the bar stools, we'relowering everything to the 36 inch counter height. that makes the kitchen feel larger, you don'thave to climb up on bar stools, and you also have more counter space to work in. another trend is cleaner, less cluttered interiors. so this kitchen has some great cabinets thathave a... they're light stain with a brown glaze on'em, kind of a tea stain.

and we call this look sort of a "new countrylook." we've got the rooster over here. but what makes it fresh and new is the stainlesstile backsplash that we've added. and we've installed it vertically, insteadof horizontally, and it gives you a little more heighth. another trend, remember the days where wehad all the ivies in the baskets and everything cluttering the top of our cabinets and itwas just nothing, but a big dust catcher? so these days we're accessorizing the topof the cabinets with fewer accessories, little groupings, and adding a lot of color.

and then, we also add color to the walls. the walls in this kitchen are really brightterracotta, kind of a coral color, and it makes for a really bright, happy environment.