I'm not a big fan of the tchotchkes. It always reminds me of a grandma's stuffy home with a million Santa dolls.

It's important to pull tons of pieces! If you have lots of options to choose from, you can play around and see that things that you wouldn't originally have expected to work together actually do! That applies to both clothing and decorating.

I think it's really important to bring your own personality to the space you're in.

I've always had a fascination with interior design. As a kid, I used to go to real estate open houses with my parents on the weekends. Like a nerd! I would think of how I would piece rooms together at those open houses.

I became interested in building furniture, because I couldn't find pieces I really loved for myself and my clients. I picked stuff up from the street, and tweaked those pieces to make them what I really wanted. It became a career!

When I first became really interested in building furniture, I went to Toys-R-Us, and spent $200 on Transformers toys. By taking the toys apart and studying how they moved, I was able to figure out how to hide a table leaf, what type of contraption I'd need to slide it under the table. I'm a really visual learner.

I have a philosophy that you've always got to honor the past, acknowledge the present and leave room in your space for the future... Talk to the person you are in love with that you're sharing with, understand what's important to them.