“A good friend of ours had used Chelsea for design work and raved about her, so we interviewed her and others. Her passion and energy stood out.  Even more importantly, she wanted to understand us, our house, our goals and our style before offering any ideas at all. We love the history of our house and the 120-year-old neighborhood and its resonance with “old St Louis” and World’s Fair days.  We have kept the basic integrity of our house structure in its rooms and gardens. The main goals were: more available space without structural changes, implementing a double oven, a layout that accommodated our goals to cook a lot and entertain often, and striving for modern conveniences in our historical home. We actually started with another color in mind, but then she came up with the green suggestion and the amount of lighting and the light feel of the design and the tiles lent itself well to a color combination - olive green and brass— that is classic and will endure for decades without feeling trendy or dated. I have to mention the wallpaper.  Who puts wallpaper in a kitchen, an old-fashioned botanical style wallpaper full of butterflies?  Chelsea does. The kitchen design is very clean and quiet in color and vibe - and Chelsea several times recommended this wallpaper for one wall.  We rejected it twice, but we love the fact that she resurrected the idea when we were making process and the wallpaper on just one wall is a surprise and delight that brings an entire artful and outdoors feel to a kitchen, we wanted to be artful and tied to the nature in which we delight with our gardens and landscaping.  The wallpaper was a genius idea we could embrace only when we could see the kitchen taking its final shape.” During the COVID-19 shut down, “Worrying about all the people coming into the house on a continual basis - crew, plumbers, electricians, inspectors, HVAC experts - when you really don’t know them or want strangers in your house. Chelsea oversaw the process and we knew and trusted her to handle things so we didn’t have to be hands-on all the time in a season of life when we’d rather not be there in person. Her great design ability and ideas and desire to make something that would thrill us.  Her attitude of “we’ll make a kitchen you’ll love for years” was what we wanted and got.”