a conversation with katy evans, senior design associate
Edward Deegan Architects
chicago, illinois how did you get into interior design? From an early age, I was always watching Trading Spaces on TLC. When I went to college, I decided to major in interior design. It's a hard field to break into. And I graduated in 2010, which was not a great time to focus on high-end residential, so I moved back to Chicago. I eventually landed a job as a design assistant at Christopher Peacock. I was there for a year and a half before joining Edward Deegan, where I've been for six years. what kinds of projects does the firm specialize in? We love designing custom homes from the ground up. But we're on the north shore of Chicago, where it's really hard to tear down an old home. We'll do historic renovations; we took an 1890s farmhouse that had a bad '80s renovation and made it look like it should look. Those are hard because you don't know what you're going to get until you start demoing. We do a ton of kitchens and cabinetry. We probably do 10 to 15 kitchen remodels a year. Clients will say, here's our first floor; what can we do with the existing footprint? what kinds of projects do you tend to gravitate toward? Whether it's the smallest or biggest job, I really like when you get a client who collaborates with you and trusts you. When someone says, "I hired you, I trust you, give me two to three options," those are the projects I look most forward to-and the ones that have the best results. any examples? The Maple project was one where the clients trust you to figure it out. It was a home built for someone else. It wasn't old, but the layout was not great and didn't work for the clients. This was one of our interior remodels with no addition. The kitchen remained in the same location, but we made the powder room smaller to make more space for the laundry and mud room. how did you end up choosing the tile for that project? I've been trying to use the MADE Shapes Favo tile in a kitchen for five years. Every time a client gets on board, they get cold feet, and we end up doing 3-by-6 MADE subway tile. The Favo isn't rectangular; it's a picket that kind of has a point. I used it in a previous project, in a pantry and master bathroom. So when the client said yes, I was really excited. It looked better to run everything horizontally rather than vertically. did the homeowner fall in love with the tile, or did you suggest it? We have a design library at Edward Deegan, and we have a few samples in our library. The client came in and met with us in the office. We had two or three palette meetings, and then I worked with our Ann Sacks rep to get the right color. I wanted to do the matte finish because we did polished countertops, and I like to do either/or.
left: MADE Shapes Favo in 200 Bright White Matte. design: Edward Deegan Architects. photography: Karen Loffing, Courtesy of Portraits of Home.
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