September 09, 2005

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Palo Alto Online

Reality TV hits home

by Carol Blitzer

It isn't often that a local kitchen designer is tapped to appear on a nationally broadcast cable television show.

Jo Sletten, a designer and co-owner of Mediterraneo Design Center in Menlo Park, was recently asked to design a kitchen for a new television show that aims to build America's dream home based on a Better Homes & Garden magazine survey of readers. The show, "Building America's Home," will appear on the Discovery Home Channel as a 10-part series appearing Fridays at 8 p.m.

Sletten first appeared in Better Homes in a 2004 issue, after she was discovered by a scout for the magazine. She submitted two of her designs "that told a story" -- a small, contemporary kitchen whose owners were not afraid of color, and a light, Colonial-style with a large island.

In February 2004, the magazine surveyed its readers, asking them what they really desired in a new house. Better Homes partnered with Discovery Home Channel to create that dream home. Sletten designed the kitchen, joining a national team that includes an architect, builder, interior designer and landscape designer.

From the survey, the Better Homes staff developed five guiding principles: The home needed to be affordable, innovative, flexible, kitchen-centric and indoor-outdoor. Before they started work on the new house, to be built in a planned community in Cumming, Ga., the team got together to judge a design contest. Although they "were hustled" through the 20 tables, each stacked with 10 packets, they all agreed readily on what was good, according to Sletten.

After that bonding experience, they met the next day to talk about the house they were responsible for designing and building -- all in about six months.

"We had determined the square feet and the flow, but not the style," Sletten recalled, noting that it started out as a contemporary farmhouse with a gable roof, but quickly evolved to a flat roof.

"It was a really nice group of people, but we had issues," Sletten said. At first they thought the house was getting too bland, then too rich. Ultimately they incorporated more pale colors, steel and glass. "We didn't want it to look like a tract home," she added.

Each design-team member had a budget, but those were somewhat negotiable. Better Homes offered $2,500 for all the kitchen appliances, Sletten said, but she countered with closer to $8,500 -- and that was using mostly the lower-end GE Profile line. She was happy to find a side-by-side refrigerator on sale, and opted for a five-burner cooktop, a single oven and a convection/microwave combo.

"We splurged with an under-counter beverage and wine refrigerator and a warming oven," she said.

Other issues drove up the house costs, including building next to a flood plane. But the designers met the home's affordability requirement by using pre-fab panel construction that cut down on framing costs.

"The hardest part was trying to agree on things that affected all of us, like the flooring," Sletten said. They considered using a local wood -- yellow pine -- but decided it was too soft, and not contemporary enough. Tile, they thought, was too cold, she added.

So they chose a pre-finished, chestnut-colored wood floor that runs throughout the kitchen, dining room, living room, entry and outside.

One of the corporate sponsors was Home Depot, so Sletten was required to incorporate cabinets and materials available there. She opted for Thomasville natural maple cabinets and ran counters in both stainless steel and Silestone, a quartz surface. Glass mosaic tiles were used in the backsplash.

Working with a team of designers from throughout the country was new for Sletten. "When working with a single client, there's a lot of communication about what they want and I'm in control of what's going on. I wasn't in control here. It was more challenging in that respect," she added.

At one point Sletten and her husband went to Mexico on vacation. "I came back and my beautiful hood was gone," she said. It seems the contractor had framed the pre-fab panels in such a way that the hood couldn't fit. So, she chose a downdraft exhaust.

But Sletten wasn't down for long. "From lemons come lemonade," she said. By adding the downdraft, she was able to incorporate a glass divider between the kitchen and dining room. "It was an innovative use of glass, and more interesting than the hood. We made it work," she said.

"You couldn't be too egotistical. We had a lot of chiefs," she said, adding that they also shared some good ideas. At one point, she convinced them to let her use the laundry room as a pantry, and they managed to incorporate the laundry area in a different room.

Sletten brought 15 years' experience designing kitchens to the table, as well as background in art and business. Although she was an art major at Emporia State University in Kansas, she worked as a banker for 10 years in New York after graduation. Deciding she needed to do something more creative, she moved to Santa Barbara and started a couple of businesses, including a children's clothing line, Giggling Lizards.

After selling that business she studied interior design and soon found her niche in kitchen design.

A dot-com offer brought Sletten and her husband to the Bay Area and eventually to a partnership at Mediterraneo, a design/build center. Here she's used to a close partnership with the person building her design -- something that certainly helped when tackling the Better Homes & Gardens project.

Would she do it again? "Oh sure ... not this year. It took a lot of time, and we had to make decisions very quickly," she said.

Assistant editor Carol Blitzer can be reached at cblitzer@paweekly.com.

What: "Building America's Home"
When: Fridays, 8 p.m. on Discovery Home Channel (The series began Aug. 19, but they are already repeating some of the earlier episodes.)
Info: Visit www.winamericashome.com to find out how to enter the home giveaway contest. (Note: The house is located about 20 minutes outside Atlanta, Georgia.)

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