cambria style, winter 2009
DESCRIPTION
Featuring Cheryl Tiegs + Color Basics + At Home with Cheryl + Living the Dream + Sticking With ItTRANSCRIPT
CAMBRIASTYLE
America’s originalsupermodel ravesabout her new kitchen
LivingtheDreamOne family’s vision
produces amasterpiece home in
North Carolina
CherylTiegsCherylTiegs
CambriaUSA.comCambriaUSA.com
INAUGURAL ISSUE / WINTER 2010
Welcome to this, our first issue of Cambria Style, a magazine
devoted to the values of our company, to its people, and to our
goal of inspiring you to create a special place in your home.
Cambria…. Ours is not just a product, but rather a unique
place, a refreshing, invigorating place where we take much pride
in how we work, how we manage, how we communicate, how we
serve, how we innovate, how we think, how we feel, and, yes, even
how we mow our grass—all with the hope for our Cambria family
and for our products that together we will come to connect with
and become a part of the lives of many people. It’s a connection
that can only be forged through people’s emotions—through their
wants, their needs, their lust for great design, and their hopes for
their most cherished place, their home. This inspiration, we hope,
comes, to some degree, from our beautiful, elegant, warm, breath-
taking natural quartz surfaces and the distinctive place and space
from which they come.
We strive each day to develop and inspire relationships with
all those that make up Cambria’s extended family. We hope to
inspire our Cambria partners, our all-important consumers, our
kitchen and bath dealers, our friends in the architecture and
design community, our builders, our installers and fabricators—
indeed, everybody who is a part of the sale, delivery, installation,
and service—not to mention the use—of our beautiful products.
That entire Cambria family—consumers and all—plays a major
role in breathing life into our products and in bringing that
life to its zestful, rewarding, and satisfying position in the
marketplace.
All of this comes from a shared culture. A culture that values
quality, elegance, warmth, beauty, excitement, individuality,
innovation, the pursuit of perfection, and many, many other
things, big and small, that together say—style. To put it simply,
Cambria has it, and now we bring it to you.… Cambria Style.
In Cambria Style we strive to offer
you an opportunity to pause, every few
months, to allow our place into your
place. We hope, through our stories and
insights, to begin an ongoing and valued
conversation that creates a new place, neither yours nor ours,
where, inspired by our discussion on these pages, we can explore
the future of your beloved sanctuary, your home.
We hope you’ll come to welcome our periodic visits to that
deeply emotional place where you live every day, inhabited by all
the desires and feelings, all the wants and needs that ultimately
define your personal look, your individual design, your unique
combination of taste and emotion that is your style. We also hope
that your style will be inspired by our style, Cambria Style.
In the end, with our stories and our ideas, we seek to nurture
in you a sense of comfort and excitement about your home, and
inspire you toward that profoundly individual dream we all share
for a place of existence that compels us to say very simply: This is
my home and my style—and I love it.
ENJOY!
Martin Davis
PRESIDENT AND CEO
Cambria
Publisher’s Letter
Welcome To Our Place
4 STYLE REPORTA roundup of news and notes
from the style frontier.
8 CULINARY SCENEWith a little help from Cambria,
Anwar Mekhayech and his partners
turned One Eleven Yorkville into
Toronto’s latest hotspot.
10 STYLE SOLUTIONSMAXIMIZE YOUR SPACE: A little planning and
some innovative approaches can make a
small kitchen feel a whole lot bigger.
36 DEALER DETAILSALL INCLUDED: Mark and Jim Rutzick have
built All Inc. into one of the largest kitchen
and bath dealers in the Midwest.
38 STUFF OF DREAMSELEGANT EXTRAS: A medley of useful but
stylish items to add color and character to
your home.
42 CAMBRIA COLLECTION42 THE CORE OF CAMBRIA: With its roots in
the family dairy business, Cambria has
always retained its key values.
44 THE COLORS OF CAMBRIA: A look at
Cambria’s industry-leading palette.
46 THE BEAUTY OF CAMBRIA: 2009 Cambria
Lifestyles Contest winners.
48 LAST LOOKKNOW YOUR ADJECTIVES: Invaluable advice
from noted interior designer Billy Beson.
SPRING 2009
INAUGURAL ISSUE
Cheryl Tiegs relaxes with one of her beloved dogsoutside her Beverly Hills home.
ON THE COVER: CHERYL TIEGS AT HOME Photographed by Dominique VorillonCambriaUSA.com
CAMBRIASTYLE
18
12 Color BasicsChoosing theappropriate colors for your kitchen is a critical startingpoint for therenovation process.
18 At Home with CherylAmerica’s originalsupermodel blendedan eclectic set ofinfluences withstunning Cambriasurfaces to create her own, verypersonal, oasis.
24 Living the DreamPam and SamHooker’s decision to build a new house in rural NorthCarolina resulted in a masterpiece.
32 Sticking with ItCambria LexusPartner FloformCountertops built itsbusiness by workinghard and committingto its core values.
4
Costs and Fees1) Fixed/Flat rate—In this case,
the designer provides a spe-
cific, upfront project total that
includes everything from
developmental costs and blue-
prints to materials and labor.
For smaller projects, this
method is very common. Nev-
ertheless, clients should insist
on a written contract that
spells out the final price and
sub-category costs as well as
how unexpected overruns or
changes in the scope of work
will be handled.
2) Hourly fee—Here, compen-
sation depends upon the
actual time expended by the
designer on the project. The
drawback to paying by the hour is that there’s
no clear-cut expectation of the project’s final
costs at the outset. However, for someone
undertaking a more ambitious project with sev-
eral unknowns, hourly fees offer a more realis-
tic and flexible working relationship.
3) Cost plus—This involves letting the designer
purchase all of the materials and services for a
job first and then resell them to the client at an
agreed-upon higher rate that covers the cost of
the designer’s time and effort. For extensive
projects or significant remodels, cost plus pro-
vides a good amalgam of flexibility for the
designer and some measure of financial control
for the client.
Find a Designer page on the American Society of Interior Designers website: asid.org/designservices/selectingFor more on the costs and fees of an interior designer, go to: asid.org/designservices/costs
Working with an Interior DesignerBefore you hire aprofessional designer, be sure you’ve done your homework and areprepared for somecritical issues you aregoing to have to address.Here are a few toconsider.
Style Report
Key QuestionsIs the designer licensed or accredited by the
American Society of Interior Designers?
Does he or she have previous experience
working on the type of project you’re
considering? (Can they provide recommenda-
tions from former clients or evidence
of work on similar projects?)
Have they demonstrated creativity,
resourcefulness, and talent?
Are they responsive to your design questions
and receptive to your individual needs?
Are they reliable and do they possess profes-
sional work habits (i.e. show up on time, hire
only reputable subcontractors, etc.)?
THE WORLD OF INTERIOR DESIGNNEWS AND NOTES FROM
5
Recycling Made Possible
As more and more Americans
have embraced conservation,
the kitchen has increasingly
had to fulfill yet another of our
homes’ daily missions: recy-
cling. (Roughly 50 percent of
U.S. households now have curb-
side recycling and more than 80
percent have access to a plastics
recycling program, whether
it’s curbside collection or com-
munity drop-off centers.) But
performing that mundane yet
important task doesn’t mean
having to give up a kitchen that
is fashionable or functional.
Here are some tips to make
recycling work for you:
Consider how many different
items will be recycled, how
often they will be picked up or
dumped, and how separate they
must be (single-stream or sepa-
rate bins for each).
Once you’ve figured that out,
you can determine the storage
volume you’ll need in your
kitchen. A good rule of thumb:
for a small family, one standard
27-quart garbage can holds about
one week’s worth of uncrushed,
sorted recyclables (i.e. just plastic
bottles or just aluminum cans).
Ideally, you should locate
these recycle bins within or near
your kitchen’s work triangle,
close to both a sink (for washing
out food and beverage residue)
and the unrecyclable trash can.
You can either add self-
contained, stand-alone recycle
bins or below-counter kitchen
cabinet inserts. Keep in mind,
however, that stand-alone bins
will be more visible and may
not exactly match your existing
kitchen décor.
If your kitchen is adjacent to
or above a garage or mudroom,
consider building a pass-through
or drop-chute that sends recy-
clables straight into a larger tub
or the actual curbside pickup
can, minimizing the need for
storage space in the kitchen.
With everyone going green these days and recycling all the rage, how can you be a good environmental citizen while still retaining a stylish kitchen? Here are a few thoughts on the subject.
Do you really need all those cabinets? How about designating one or two of them for your recycling bins?
Four- and two-bin undercounter styles from Kraftmaid.com Rotary recycling center from Organize.com
Stand alone recycling system from Ecopod.org
Countertop color:NottinghamTM
Style Report
Now You See It...
On the runways of the fashion
world, it’s only a matter of time
before everything old becomes
new again. Well, the same holds
true in today’s kitchens, as the
pastel and primary hues of the
1950s are once again proving
popular among homeowners
looking to make a bold design
statement with their refrigera-
tors and stoves. After the some-
what psychedelic harvest golds
and burnt oranges of the 1960s
and ’70s, the more austere black-
then-white era of the 1980s and
’90s, and the quasi-industrial
stainless steel-look of the past
decade, it’s perhaps not surpris-
ing that consumers are seeking
out appliances with visually
engaging colors to make their
kitchen appliances pop. To
accommodate this, large, estab-
lished appliance-makers, like
Viking, as well as smaller, retro-
style brands, like Big Chill and
Elmira/Northstar, now offer up
colors like robin’s egg blue,
flamingo pink and fire engine
red as part of this kitchen color-
palette renaissance.
Now You Don’tOf course every trend in fashion
fosters a counter-trend, so the
move toward bolder, more color-
ful kitchen appliances has like-
wise begotten a contrasting trend
that seeks to make them disap-
pear. This “full overlay” look, as
it’s known, camouflages appli-
ances behind thin veneer panels
designed to blend in with the
kitchen’s (usually wooden) cabi-
netry. This seamless look tends to
appeal to homeowners looking
for a more traditional and calm-
ing effect in their kitchens.
1950s
turquoise
pink
harvest gold
avocado
black white stainlesssteel
TBD
1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s
Can you find the refrigerator?
The vertical handles on the
cabinet to the right are
the only clues.
Current trends in appliance design tend toward the colorfully retro or inconspicuously modern.
Island color: AshfordTM
Get the greatest bang for your buck withthese home improvement projects.
For nearly 60 years, an unmis-takable trend has continuedapace in American house-holds—as family size has gottensmaller, houses have grownincreasingly bigger. In fact, since1940, the average amount ofsquare footage per person innew, single-family U.S. homeshas more than tripled—fromroughly 300 to 965 square feet.Where has all this extra squarefootage been added? Some of ithas been devoted to the cre-ation of in-home retreats —master suites with upsized bed-
rooms, bathrooms, and generous walk-in closets. Butmore and more these burgeoning floor plans have focusedon a house’s public spaces, whether it’s awarding muchmore space to traditional areas like family rooms andkitchens or the creation of brand-new spaces like mediarooms, children’s playrooms, or home theaters.
Now, for the first time in decades, some experts arepredicting average home size will shrink (albeit slightly).“We don’t think the size will rise anymore,” noted Gopal Ahluwalia at the 2007 International Builders Show.Ahluwalia, vice president of research for the NationalAssociation of Home Builders, also pointed out that aconsensus of industry experts polled by the NAHB nowbelieve that the average size of new, single-family homeswould decline from 2,521 square feet to 2,330 squarefeet—a roughly 7.5% drop—by 2015. Several factors couldbe pushing this trend, including the recent nationwide dipin home prices, the rising cost of energy, and a notableincrease in empty-nest Baby Boomers looking to downsize.
According to a survey conducted by
HomeGain, an online marketplace
that connects realtors, home buy-
ers, and home sellers, cleaning and
de-cluttering as well as lightening
and brightening your home can
noticeably rejuvenate a house’s
appearance and pay relatively large
dividends in the value of your
home compared to the money
invested (see table above). “These
steps can cost as little as a couple of
hundred dollars and have returns
as high as $1,500 to $2,000,” says
HomeGain’s Jessica Gopalakrish-
nan. Other tactics, like outdoor
landscaping, repairing the electri-
cal wiring, plumbing, and flooring
as well as shampooing a home’s
carpeting, also made HomeGain’s
list of straightforward, worthwhile,
For more information and additional low-cost, high-impact home improvementprojects, check out HomeGain’s Home Sale Maximizer tool at www.homegain.com/download/max_guide.pdf.
and relatively inexpensive ways to
freshen up a home.
But to achieve the most dra-
matic results—and if you’re prep-
ping your home for resale, the
biggest potential increase in sales
price—realtors recommended re-
painting the interior and exterior
walls and making minor updates
and repairs to a home’s kitchen
and bathrooms. However,
Gopalakrishnan points out that
these steps typically involve the
largest upfront costs. But the
greater aesthetic effect and the
larger impact upon the asking
price—on average, a $7,500
increase—of repainting a house
and updating its kitchen and bath-
rooms often justifies the extra time
and expense.
HERE TO STAY:
HigherCeilingsON THE OUTS:
Formal LivingRooms
2015HOME DESIGNCrystal Ball
4.0
3.0
2.0
1.0
0.01940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Average Household Size (persons)
Average New House Size (square feet)
NU
MBE
R O
F PE
OPL
E
SIZE O
F HO
USE
Growing Homes, Shrinking Families?
FLOORING
CARPETING
PAINT EXTERIOR
PAINT INTERIOR
KITCHEN/BATHROOMS(minor/cosmetic)
$0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000
COST OF IMPROVEMENT
INCREASE IN HOME VALUE
A TREND REVERSED
Home Sale Maximizer
Has the era of the massiveMcMansion finally ended?
8
Anwar Mekhayech has a knack for restau-
rants. The Toronto-based designer, a co-
principal of architecture and design studio
the Design Agency and co-host of the pop-
ular HGTV series The Designer Guys,
grew up in a restaurant family and even
owned a couple himself. “If you’ve worked
behind the scenes, you get a better under-
standing of what it takes to offer a two-star
experience as opposed to a four- or five-star
experience,” he says.
So Mekhayech and his partners Allen
Chan and Matthew Davis were shoo-ins to
design the interiors for One Eleven
Yorkville, a new upscale restaurant and
lounge in the tres chic Toronto neighbor-
hood of the same name. Owner Michael
Etherington became familiar with the
Design Agency’s work as a manager at
Lobby, another Toronto hotspot that bene-
fited from the Design Agency’s touch.
“Michael wanted it to be luxurious,”
says Mekhayech, “not necessarily splashy,
but he wanted it to make an impact.” In a
play on the menu’s emphasis on what
Mekhayech calls “seafood nibbles,” the
Design Agency, with input from Ethering-
ton, conceived of an aquatic theme for the
space; upon entering the restaurant,
patrons are greeted by a waterfall cascad-
ing over the One Eleven Yorkville logo.
The restaurant’s innovative “bubble walls”
incorporate that aquatic element with a
nod to the bar’s extensive selection of high-
end champagne: Acrylic wall panels are
filled with water that, with the help of an
air pump sending tiny bubbles from floor
to ceiling, gives the restaurant the feel of a
room set deep in a sea of champagne.
And “deep” is right. The restaurant is
on the bottom floor of a commercial
building and sits at about six feet below
grade; patrons don’t enter One Eleven
Yorkville, they descend. This, coupled
with the relatively small 2,000-square-
foot space, created some design chal-
lenges. Nothing new in that, says
Mekhayech: “I’ve never seen a restaurant
designed perfectly. There are always com-
promises with the space.”
Compromises with this space involved
getting creative in ways that would give
the illusion of more space. “The lighting
was key” for this, says Mekhayech. The
restaurant’s bubble walls feature colored
LED lights to open up the shadowy rooms.
In the fall and winter, the lights can be set
to a golden amber and in the summer they
shine cool blue. The ceiling is also inlaid
With a little help from Cambria, Anwar Mekhayech and his partners at Toronto’s Design Agency turned One Eleven Yorkville into the city’s newest hotspot.
BY M A X B E R RY
CulinaryScene
Commercial Design Mekhayech (oppo-site, middle, with
partners Allen Chanand Matthew Davis)designed a coffered
ceiling (opposite,below) with inlaid
gold mirrors toreflect the candle-
light and create theillusion of extra
height; the tabletops(right) are com-
posed of twoCambria colors,
OakhamptonTM, witha custom inlay of
Cambrian BlackTM.
9
with a gold mirror that gives the impres-
sion of extra height by reflecting the can-
dles adorning the tabletops—reflective in
themselves since they’re fashioned from
Cambria quartz.
“It was our team’s collective idea to
incorporate a tailored and customized look
for the tabletops and we had heard of Cam-
bria’s quartz surfaces and the ability to do a
custom inlay with different colors,”
Mekhayech says. The tabletops, picking up
on the motif introduced by the restaurant’s
branded waterfall, also bear the restau-
rant’s logo. “We used the logo to form a
graphic pattern on the tabletops,”
Mekhayech continues. “Each table has a
different part of the logo’s script. A few of
the square tables can be pushed together to
make the logo legible from above.”
Mekhayech and his partners combined
these ultra-modern touches—LED lights,
indoor waterfalls—with natural elements
like the slab of African hardwood they
hand-fashioned into the restaurant’s bar to
achieve what Mekhayech considers the
essential component of any great design:
balance. “There’s definitely a relationship
[within] the space. If certain things
[within a space] are angular, there has to
be an equal and opposite element to soften
it up or make it flow more.” A lifelong
appreciator of, and participant in, all
things culinary, the ultimate reward for
Mekhayech is watching others enjoy a culi-
nary experience he helped craft. “It’s fun
to sit back and watch people interact with
the space,” he says.
One Eleven Yorkville is now open to the
general public.
Sometimes a small kitchen can seem like a
big headache. Whether it’s a small city
apartment or a modest house in the sub-
urbs, we often spend so much time in our kitchens
that they become the focal points of our homes.
Between routine meals, entertaining, and simple
living, any kitchen sees the bulk of a home’s traffic
and activity. This leaves small kitchen owners pon-
dering the eternally vexing question: how can I do
so much in so little space?
Fortunately, with a little planning and resource-
fulness, even the smallest kitchens can be designed
to handle your busy lifestyle without breaking
your bank. The following are some tips for putting
together an efficient small kitchen.
Planning. Before you consider how to redesign your
kitchen spend a little time observing how you use
it. Do you do a lot of cooking at home, or does the
microwave simply reheat takeout leftovers? Do
you entertain often or rarely? How does your fam-
ily actually use the kitchen space you have? Once
you’ve answered those questions, and understand
your priorities in the kitchen, you can set about
redesigning it to maximize its potential.
Make the most of cabinet space. Large kitchens
have the luxury of half-used cabinets. Not so for
small kitchens. Add lazy susans and pull-out trays
to your cabinets to help maximize your use of
available space. Keep non-essential items out of
the cabinets. Cook books, for example, can be
stored on a shelf elsewhere in the house. Use
overhead hanging racks to store pots and pans.
Not only does this save precious cabinet space, but
it can add an air of culinary attractiveness to the
kitchen.
Light & Bright. While you might not have a lot of
space to work with, you can create the illusion of
more space with a few simple tricks. Nothing rein-
forces the sense of enclosure like dim light. Add
bright lights, especially under cabinets, and take
advantage of natural light sources like windows to
bring in as much light as possible. Choose light
colors for walls, counters, and backsplash tiles to
increase the feeling of space.
Appliances. You’re not the only one out there with
a small kitchen. Plenty of people face the same
space constrictions as you do, and appliance makers
have designed products to meet those challenges.
KitchenAid, for instance, offers 24-inch-wide single-
and double-drawer dishwashers. Many manufac-
turers also make appliances for over-the-counter
installation, saving precious counter space.
Style Solutions
Light, especially under the cabinets (below), increases thesense of space; available space savers include: (right, top tobottom) an overhead hanging rack, a narrow sliding spiceshelf, a wall-mounted wine rack, and a drawer dishwasher.
Maximize Your SpaceA little planning and some innovative approaches can make a smallkitchen feel a whole lot bigger. These timely tips can help.BY C H R I S TO P H E R F R E E B U R N
The Beauty of Stone The Durability of Quartz
© Cambria 2010
The Beauty of Stone
The Durability of Quartz
CambriaUSA.com
CAM 01-13.7:Cambria 5/27/10 6:09 PM Page 17
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Use the “60-30-10” rule of thumb, advisescolor consultant JillClarkson. Use yourpredominant color onroughly 60% of theroom’s surfaces (say, the cabinets); choose asecondary color forabout 30% of the room(which might be thewalls, or the countertopsand floors); and pick athird color as an accent(often a stronger orcomplementary color)on just 10% of the room(perhaps a backsplash,piece of furniture, orartwork).
Rich and European? Crisp and modern? Warm
and cozy? Will it be an eat-in kitchen? Do you
have children? Do you like wood, or white or
painted cabinets? Not sure? Start tearing out
pages from magazines of kitchens you like—
whether it’s just one element or an overall look.
Think about other people’s kitchens you’ve liked
and why. After you’ve culled a group of
tearsheets, go through them and look for com-
mon ground—you might find that you’re drawn
to blue kitchens, or open kitchens with few upper
cabinets, or that you prefer concealed appliances.
All of these clues will be invaluable in your plan-
ning process. As Susan Serra, a kitchen designer
based in Northport, N.Y., and the author of an in-
fluential blog, thekitchendesigner.com, puts it,
“Look at the ‘big picture’ first to visualize the end
result you are seeking.”
Don’t forget a touch or two of black. “Black cre-
ates drama and contrast,” says Ann Morris,
CMKBD, of Allied Kitchen and Bath in Ft. Laud-
erdale, Florida. Whether it’s a set of framed prints
or a coffeemaker, a worn black cabinet, or ebonized
bar stools, a bit of black adds punch. Similarly, Jill
Clarkson, a color consultant in Corte Madera, in
northern California, suggests adding a touch of red
to enliven a neutral color scheme: “A little bit of
red—in a vase or a picture frame—can add visual
richness.”
How will you use your kitchen most? “If some-
one is a great cook, the appliances will often
lead the discussion,” says interior designer
Whether you are preparing to renovate, build new,
or just refresh your existing kitchen, there are myr-
iad decisions you must confront as you make your
plans: In no other room are there as many materi-
als, appliances, and decisions to be made! While
color might not be the first element that comes to
mind in planning a kitchen, it is actually one of the
most important, and can help guide many of the
other decisions you have to make.
Where To StartWhat’s nearby? Look at adjacent rooms. Does
your kitchen open onto a great room, family or din-
ing room? Even if they’re only glimpsed through a
doorway, adjacent rooms and color schemes have an
impact. Ideally there should be a relationship or flow
between rooms, rather than a total disconnect.
What’s your comfort level with color? Look in
your closet for clues: How we dress is often indica-
tive of how we decorate, in terms of color prefer-
ences, and how bold or safe we tend to be in our
choices. “In all instances,” suggests Lyn Peterson,
author of Real Life Kitchens (Clarkson Potter),
“start with your personal preferences. If you are a
blue and yellow person, chances are you will never
be a bittersweet and sage person.”
What’s fixed and finite? Do you have appliances
you’ll be keeping, or cabinets or counters that are
staying? Your scheme will need to incorporate and
complement any existing materials or elements.
What’s the overall look and feel? Light and airy?
for the kitchenColorBasics
Choosing the appropriate colors for your kitchen and its key componentsis a critical starting point for the renovation process.
B Y J I L L K I R C H N E R S I M P S O N
14
generally the largest surface and biggest expenditure
in the kitchen, they play a key role in setting the over-
all style and are often where most people start. Here
is some advice from designers on choosing cabinets,
whether wood, white, or colored:
Think long-term. “Part of the answer to the color
question is how long you will be living in your home,
and your concern for resale value,” points out Susan
Serra. “The cabinets usually cost the most, so color
decisions should be made carefully.” Barbara Schmidt
concurs: “Neutrals sell a home. Anything strong in
color or design limits the market. The kitchen and
master bath close the sale of the home, so your choices
now may be reflected in your home’s value later.”
Instead of using only one type of cabinetry through-
out, consider using a different finish or color in one or
more areas. You might opt for wood cabinets but intro-
duce color in an island (see photo, opposite), message
center, or pantry cabinet. This adds interest and helps
break up monotony, especially in a large kitchen.
Wood cabinets, while neutral, are themselves a
color—one of a wide range of browns, from light ash or
beech to rich mahogany and cherry to dark walnut or
ebonized wood. Woods are a versatile partner with
many types of countertops and surfaces; they also gen-
erally have good durability and endurance. However,
“Think about how much light is in the room,” advises
Kyong Agapiou. “If it’s a bright room with lots of sun-
light, dark wood can be gorgeous. If it’s a dark room,
you have to be more careful. You may want to opt for
Barbara Schmidt, of bstyle, inc., in Minneapolis,
Minnesota, who is also a set designer for Cambria.
“If you entertain a lot, then the island area becomes
the focal point. Or if you want to update for resale,
surfaces become the most important factor.”
Ask for help. Designing a kitchen involves much
more than just ordering cabinets. A kitchen or interior
designer can help ensure that you don’t make expensive
mistakes, and also organize the space for optimal effi-
ciency, help you navigate the vast array of choices avail-
able, and make sure every element works well together.
Gather swatches and samples of every material
you’re considering and try them out in the space. Not
just paint chips, but also wood flooring or cabinet sam-
ples, countertop samples, backsplash and/or floor tiles,
cabinet hardware, and appliance finishes, if possible.
“Try to gather multiple options for each element, be-
cause you never know what will work best until you get
it into your own home and look at it in the lighting of
the room,” advises Kyong Agapiou, CKD, ASID, a
kitchen and interior designer for The Kitchen Factor
in East Haven, Connecticut. “People are often surprised
when they see what works best in the actual space.”
Color, Step by StepCABINETSThere may be other starting points for designing a
kitchen—for example, a beautiful backsplash tile, or
a fire-engine red Aga range—but since cabinets are
Countertop color:OakhamptonTM
Island color:BrownhillTM
15
With white cabinets,consider using tiledbacksplashes andpatterned countertops toprovide relief from glareand add needed texture tothe kitchen; warmerwood cabinets (opposite)call for countertops thatpick up their base notes.
Countertop color: VictoriaTM
Island color: Welshpool BlackTM
ResourcesReal-Life Kitchens, by Lyn Peterson (Clarkson Potter)Can’t Fail Color Schemes for Kitchens & Baths, by Amy Wax (Creative Homeowner) The Kitchen Designer blogby Susan Serra: www.thekitchendesigner.com
Try the “Online KitchenDesigner” tool atwww.hgtv.com and alsobrowse through their “De-sign Portfolio,” featuringdozens of kitchen designs.Kitchens.com offers awealth of resources, in-cluding tons of kitchen photos, productnews, and designer advice. Order a free Kitchen & BathWorkbook or find a certi-fied kitchen designer inyour area on the National Kitchen and Bath Association’s website,www.nkba.org.
16
lighter wood, or a glazed finish. You could break up the
wood with open shelves, glass doors or an accent color,
so it doesn’t feel too heavy.”
The type of wood you choose can guide the other
color choices in the room. Jill Clarkson suggests: “For
dark, warm finishes such as cherry, a contrasting cool
color such as celadon green will look fresh and clean.
For lighter wood cabinetry, such as maple or pine, you
might want to go for a mid- to darker wall color that
will really make the cabinetry pop.”
White cabinets can help a kitchen feel light, clean
and airy, but keep some pointers in mind: “If you
have all white cabinets and are thinking about white
counters as well, make sure there is some place you
have relief from that glare,” advises Amy Wax, au-
thor of Can’t Fail Color Schemes for Kitchens & Baths
(Creative Homeowner) and color consultant at Your
Color Source Studio in Montclair, New Jersey. “White
can actually be tiring on the eyes. Add some soft color
on counters, backsplash, or walls for relief.” The backs
of glass-front cabinets can be another nice place to
add color.
“Texture is essential in an all-white kitchen,” says
Ann Morris. Add interest to white with a raised-re-
lief tile backsplash, or accents of stone, wood, textured
glass, or other tactile materials.
“All whites do not match,” Morris adds. White has
clear undertones, whether warm and yellowish or cool
and bluish. Try to keep the undertone consistent and
always look at all whites in the space, in natural and
artificial light.
White plus a color always looks fresh. “For cool
white cabinetry, you may want to add warm colors
such as yellow, almond, or biscotti. White also looks
fabulous with sage green and blues,” advises Jill
Clarkson. And, black and white is a classic that’s in
vogue with retro and industrial kitchens.
Don’t be afraid to try colored cabinets. “In my last
home, I had red cabinets. That kitchen was on the
cover of House Beautiful and in their advertising for
years,” says Lyn Peterson. “I had my Viking range
sprayed the same red, and Viking later introduced
that exact color because they had so many requests
for it!” Peterson suggests choosing a color with “a
quiet base note. Blues need a gray base note; reds a
browner base note; greens want to be sage-ier. Loud
brights are hard to pull off.”
COUNTERS“People put a lot of emphasis on cabinet choices, but
your countertop can be just as important,” points out
Amy Wax, “because it’s what you look at most as
you’re working. If you don’t like your countertop, you
won’t like the room.”
“Do you want contrast or to blend in and go mono-
chromatic?” asks Ann Morris. Neutral stone counter-
tops, such as quartz, in grays, black, browns, or whites,
go with almost everything. Keep in mind that “very
dark surfaces can be hard on your eyes for long periods,
and reflective elements like mica can sometimes be dis-
tracting,” says Wax.
Counters with a lot of “movement” or pattern
should be balanced by a quieter backsplash, or per-
haps a different countertop on the island. “If it is a
‘busy’ countertop, I would not use it on the backsplash
as well,” says Peterson. “Pattern doesn’t read the same
when it is both horizontal and vertical.”
“Different countertops can help define different
areas and provide added interest,” says Susan Serra.
The island is a common place to use a differently
colored countertop; a desk area could be another. “But
the traditional design of countertops in one material
and color is still very much alive and helps create
‘flow’ in a kitchen,” she says.
If you want to use a colored, rather than neutral,
countertop, “It can either be the ‘star’ of the kitchen,
with more neutral or quiet cabinets, or you can pick
up the color in other areas, such as a tile feature above
the cooktop, or a colored appliance,” suggests Serra.
“White countertops look contemporary and sleek
and reflect a lot of light in darker closed spaces,” says
Barbara Schmidt. “If your space needs that extra
light, be sure to add texture and layers of warmth in
Countertop color: Snowdon WhiteTM
17
kitchen, you can consider using white appliances, and
for medium to dark woods, such as walnut and dark
oak, you could use black appliances. “White or black
can work well so long as the contrast level is held in
check,” says Jill Clarkson. “Be sure there is additional
white or black added throughout the space to make
it look cohesive.” Barbara Schmidt believes white ap-
pliances are passé, especially when used in non-white
kitchens.
For a statement-making blast of color, adventure-
some types (not overly concerned with resale) could
consider choosing a colored range, such as those from
Aga, Viking, or La Cornue, in shades like cobalt blue
or lipstick red. Or, play it safer with vibrantly colored
small appliances such as mixers, toasters, and blenders.
ACCESSORIESYou can’t go wrong by adding shots of color with
bowls, cookware, pottery, artwork, even dish towels or
flowering plants. Accessories are an inexpensive, flex-
ible way to change the color story of your kitchen as
often as you’d like. In a white, wood or otherwise
neutral kitchen, pops of bright color will stand out
brilliantly and enliven the overall scheme.
If your kitchen has a predominant hue, choose a
shade across the color wheel (what’s called a “com-
plementary” color) for your accent or accessory color.
Complementary colors energize each other.
Putting it all togetherHere are some good rules of thumb for making your
choices work together successfully:
Use the “60-30-10” rule of thumb, advises color
consultant Jill Clarkson. (See page 13.)
For a monochromatic scheme, use different intensi-
ties, or “values” of the same color, to make it interesting.
Decide what’s going to take center stage. “Walls,
cabinets, counters and floors shouldn’t all be similar,”
says Amy Wax. “Choose one element to be the
strongest.” On the other hand, “Too many different
colors can create discord,” points out Ann Morris.
“Your eye is going all over the place. It feels like Mc-
Donald’s or a kindergarten. Save bright saturations
for accent colors.”
“I design spaces to have focal points and resting
areas, and those can be defined by tones of color from
the same family,” says Barbara Schmidt. “By using
different tones of one color, I can highlight
architectural details and special areas.”
In the end the best rule of thumb
may be the simplest: It’s your kitchen,
make it your own!
the rest of the kitchen. I love rustic woods mixed with
white, and bringing the outside in with elements of
wood or green tones.”
FLOORING“If I’m doing a tile floor—for example, one of the
great porcelain tiles that mimic the look of stone but
are easier to care for—I like to coordinate the tile
backsplash with it,” advises Kyong Agapiou.
If you have wood cabinets and are putting in a
wood floor, make sure the two coordinate. “It’s safer to
go either lighter or darker on the floors. You don’t want
it to be too matchy-matchy,” advises Susan Serra.
BACKSPLASHES AND WALLSThe backsplash can be a great place to add a splash
of color. “A tile backsplash can bring beautiful art to
your walls, perhaps in an inset above the cooktop, with
some accents continuing beneath the cabinets. There
is an almost infinite range of options—from glass
mosaic to ceramics to stone,” says Agapiou.
“The backsplash sits back and is obscured in large
part by countertop accessories and appliances,” points
out Lyn Peterson. “If it is dark, it gets even darker
when undercounter lights are off. So
nothing too deep in color for the back-
splash unless you want a gloomy counter
work area.”
Because walls are often a relatively
small surface area in a kitchen, they are
a good place to experiment with bolder
color. Paint is also the easiest and least
expensive element to change. If your
cabinets, counters, and floors are neutral,
try adding rich color on the walls,
whether a deep red, sunny yellow, or
grass green.
APPLIANCESStainless steel, still popular, is a good mid-
tone that goes with everything. But given
the proliferation of appliances in the
kitchen—“not only bigger refrigerators
and cooktops, but sometimes also beverage
centers, wine fridges, double wall ovens, or
duplicate dishwashers,” points out Peter-
son—you may want to consider concealing
some appliances with cabinet fronts.
Because stainless steel is very re-
flective, it can stand up to darker
or richer background colors in
the kitchen. In a light
Pottery, cookware, patterned dishes, colored appliances, etc. (left) can all bring bracingsplashes of color to an otherwise muted kitchen palette. White cabinets and light coun-tertops (below, left) cry out for a bold color on the walls to add a dramatic accent.
Countertop color: DoverTM
Floor colors: HazelfordTMand DoverTM
19
For someone who has lived much of her adult life traveling the
world to exotic locations with an endless barrage of flash bulbs illu-
minating her every move, it is perhaps understandable if Cheryl
Tiegs tends toward a more grounded and subdued lifestyle when
out of the glare of the public eye. Nowhere is this desire more
apparent than in her thoughtfully designed and tastefully under-
stated home in Bel Air, California. It is her oasis, the place where
she can escape from the hustle and bustle of L.A. to meditate,
where the closest thing to an entourage involves her two Labrador
retrievers gamboling along behind her, and where her iconic status
as America’s first supermodel takes a back seat to a much more
important role—that of being a mom to her 17-year-old son Zack.
“I like the simplicity of the design of my house,” Tiegs says,
while sitting comfortably in the midst of it. And despite the
swirl of photographers, cameras, and lighting that she has
graciously allowed in to document her recent kitchen renova-
tion, Tiegs says her home’s design is all about producing a
“soothing, calming effect.”
But befitting the eclectic, well-
traveled nature of her life, her home’s
design has never been about rigidly
conforming to any one architectural
moment, place, or style. Raised on a
farm in Minnesota, Tiegs has posed
on secluded tropical beaches, lived
abroad for a time in Africa, trekked
At HomewithCheryl
PHOTOGRAPHS BY DOMINIQUE VORILLON
America’s original supermodel blended an eclectic set of influenceswith stunning Cambria surfaces to create her own, very personal, oasis.
BY R E E D R I C H A R D S O N
Tiegs describes her DoverTM
extra-thick countertopsfrom Cambria’s Desert CollectionTM as “verysmooth, very zen.” The two-toned octagon-and-dia-mond pattern on her Cam-bria tile floors mirrors thelight tan and dark browncolors on her cabinets.
21
through Mexico’s Copper Canyon and above the Arctic Circle, and
now embraces the environmentally conscious ethos of Southern
California. Accordingly, Tiegs has modeled her house’s style on
those personal experiences, blending together a number of differ-
ent design influences—Traditional Country, Balinese, British
Colonial, Eco-friendly—to create a harmonious and peaceful
inner sanctum.
But, as many homeowners discover, striking just the right bal-
ance between what’s aesthetically pleasing and pragmatically pos-
sible, isn’t always easy. Recently, Tiegs confronted just this very
problem when she found herself more and more frustrated with
the elegant, yet exasperating, Italian ceramic tiles covering the
countertops and floors of her kitchen.
“They looked good,” Tiegs readily admits, “but these days,
because I live with two dogs and a teenager, we have an active
household and so what becomes very important in my life at
home is making things easy.”
Her Italian tiles, she increas-
ingly felt, were anything but.
“I would find myself agoniz-
ing over them all the time,” she
explains. “If I had friends over and someone would leave a wine
glass stain on the counter or if I was squeezing a lemon to make a
salad for myself or if the dogs tracked in something from outside,
I would just constantly be thinking, ‘I can’t leave any trace or that
[stain] is going to last forever,’” she says. And no matter how dili-
gent she was about keeping them clean, Tiegs says the tiles always
seemed unkempt and dirty.
Occasionally, she would break down and hire an outside clean-
ing service to come in and spend a whole day scrubbing out all the
stains and resealing the surface of the tiles. But the excessive cost to
maintain their appearance—around $3,000 a cleaning—and the
harsh chemicals used to seal them, simply made her kitchen more
of a hassle than it was worth. “I didn’t want to end up a slave to my
floors and counters, but that was exactly what was happening,” she
recalls. “Finally, I said to myself, ‘what’s wrong with this picture?’”
Once she decided to replace the Italian tiles in her kitchen,
Tiegs, along with her close friend, interior designer Martyn
Lawrence-Bullard, turned to natural quartz surfaces to create her
new kitchen countertops and flooring. Because of their non-
porous nature, quartz products resist stains, which means no more
worries about wine stains or dog prints (or costly chemical
sealants) residing on her countertops and floors. And when it
came time to choose which brand of quartz products to use,
Tiegs’s choice can be traced back to her roots.
“I still go back to Minnesota quite a bit and I met [Cambria
President and CEO] Marty Davis and his family a few years ago
and we’ve become friends,” Tiegs explains. After accepting an invi-
tation to tour Cambria’s state-of-the-art production facility in south
central Minnesota, she came away impressed with its environmen-
tal sensitivity: The facility recycles every drop of wastewater back
into the quartz production process. She also admired the products:
Cambria’s 93-percent pure natural
quartz countertops and floors are
stain resistant, twice as strong as
granite, and both Greenguard Indoor
1947— Born on September 25th in
Breckenridge, Minnesota
1964— Debuts on the cover of Glamour
magazine at the tender age of 17
1970— Makes first appearance on the cover
of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue
1975— Second time on the cover of Sports
Illustrated’s swimsuit issue
1978— First appearance on the cover of
Time magazine (cover line: “The All-
American Model”). Popular poster of
Tiegs in a pink bikini appears and
quickly becomes a pop culture icon
1979— Tiegs becomes the first prominent
model to cross over into the celebrity-
endorsement business; begins selling her
own signature clothing line at Sears
1980— Tiegs authors book The Way to
Natural Beauty
1983— Graces the cover of Sports Illustrated’s
swimsuit issue a then-record third time
1984— Appears on the cover of Time magazine,
which touts her role in the comeback
of Sears
1995— Buys her current home, a 1950s
“Hawaiian house,” in Bel Air and
begins extensively renovating it
1996— Appears on Travel Channel series
Pathfinders: Exotic Journeys,
backpacking through Mexico’s
Copper Canyon
2004—In Sports Illustrated’s 40th anniversary
swimsuit issue, Tiegs is inducted into
the magazine’s swimsuit Hall of Fame
2007— Tiegs again named one of People
magazine’s 100 Most Beautiful People.
Embarks on 10-day expedition to the
Arctic Circle. Partners with Cambria
2009—Begins new role as celebrity judge on
ABC reality show, True Beauty
The Cheryl File: Tale of an Enduring Legend
Balinese, Traditional Country, and British Colonialstyles co-exist gracefullythroughout Tiegs’ elegantbut comfortable home.
Ever since her first appearance on the cover of a national magazine in 1964, Cheryl Tiegs has beena fixture on the American scene
MakingThings Easy
22
Air Quality® and Greenguard for Children and Schools® certified.
Finally, she was impressed with the company overall, with its val-
ues, and with the people she came to know. So impressed, in fact,
that in 2007 she decided to partner with Cambria.
“I’ve found throughout my career, whether it was with Cover
Girl makeup or my clothing line at Sears or my eyewear collec-
tion, it’s best to work with people that really care about what
they’re doing,” she explains. “I’ve found that connection with
Cambria.” And when it comes to endorsing a product or company,
Tiegs is someone who clearly understands the stakes involved.
Her clothing line partnership at Sears during the 1980s brought
in an estimated $100 million in revenue in its first year and was so
successful in reviving the moribund brand that it landed Tiegs on
the cover of Time magazine. “But the real turning point in my
decision to become a Cambria partner,” she stresses, “was under-
standing the company’s commitment to the environment.”
For Tiegs, environmental advocacy is no mere pose. She traces
her eco-awareness epiphany back nearly 25 years, to the time she
spent observing the wildlife while living in Kenya. Now an avowed
recycler of pretty much everything (she even takes newspapers off
of airplanes to ensure they don’t end up in the trash), her current
home is a wealth of individual earth-friendly initiatives. Tiegs has
installed both compact fluorescent light bulbs and light-channel-
ing solar tubes to cut down on the use of electricity, converted her
pool to a more natural salt-water based cleaning system, and now
boasts of three low-emission vehicles in her garage (two gas-elec-
tric hybrids as well as an experimental SUV powered by a hydro-
gen fuel cell). And at the start of her recent remodel, she even had
each of the Italian tiles in her kitchen painstakingly removed one
by one so she could reuse them elsewhere. “We’re not a throwaway
society anymore and that’s how it should be,” she says.
Still, Tiegs points out that “it doesn’t make any sense to buy
something that’s practical but still ugly.” On that account, she and
designer Lawrence-Bullard, who has worked with other high-pro-
file clients such as Elton John and Cher, were anything but disap-
pointed. “Because of the different design influences in my house
and because I was keeping my cabinets, I wanted my new flooring
and countertops to match all that,” she says. “And I found it was
really easy because of all the choices and colors Cambria offered.”
For her countertops, she and Lawrence-Bullard settled on a fairly
monochromatic dusky tan color (DoverTM) from Cambria’s Desert
CollectionTM. Describing its look as “very smooth and very zen,” the
Her beloved dogs Truffle (left, and opposite, right) and Bugs (opposite, jumping) are Cheryl’s constant companions,and greatly enjoy the eco-friendly salt water pool, just one of the many green features of Tiegs’ California home.
Going Green
23
extra-thick, blunt-edged countertop adds a subtle, modern touch to
an otherwise traditional country kitchen. And its color, when joined
with the pale-yellow backsplash, creates a light-colored horizontal
beltline around the kitchen that balances nicely with the dark
wooden hues of the cabinets and doors above and below.
For her kitchen floor, Tiegs opted for a more interesting look,
going with a two-tone, octagon-and-diamond pattern (DoverTM
and HazelfordTM, respectively, from Cambria’s Desert CollectionTM)
that mirrors the light tan and dark brown color pair in the rest of
the kitchen. In fact, Tiegs says she was so dazzled by the way her
kitchen floor turned out that she expanded her flooring renova-
tion to include her guesthouse.
Previously covered with seagrass fiber flooring, the guesthouse’s
living room, which her son Zack uses as a music rehearsal space, now
has a cool, FieldstoneTM Cambria tile floor (left) that extends all the
way into the bathroom and up and around the shower stall. “It’s
beautiful,” Tiegs says. “Originally, I was going to stop at the bath-
room wall, but then I thought, ‘Why stop there?’ and I did the sides of
the shower in it as well,” she explains. “Because of that, the whole
thing just kind of flows beautifully from one room to the next.”
One year later, Tiegs continues to be pleased with her kitchen
and guesthouse renovation. “They’re more than just beautiful
slabs of something,” Tiegs points out. “If I see a spill or a stain
now, I’ll just wipe it up and it’s gone.” But even more important
than how her remodeled spaces function or how they look, she
says, is how her new countertops and floors fit within her home
and lifestyle. Timelessly beautiful, eminently practical, and envi-
ronmentally sensitive—her new renovations fit all of these to a
tee, so much so that the cover girl proudly says of her rejuvenated
home, “I’ve made it my own.”
Floor color: FieldstoneTM
24
25
LivingtheDreamLiving
theDreamWhen Pam and Sam Hooker decided to build
a new house in rural North Carolina, they searchedhigh and low to find just the right elements to
fulfill their vision. In the end, they selected Cambria surfaces for their kitchen and three of their
bathrooms. The result is a masterpiece. BY CHRISTOPHER FREEBURN
26
One of the things that we really wanted was a house that looked like it had been sitting there for 100 years.... Every detail of the house seemed to fit
perfectly with the colonial look we wanted.”–SAM HOOKER
27
surprise that the house they finally built stands like a magnificent
plantation manor, complete with stoic white columns, great glass
windows, and ample verandas from which to gaze on the tobacco
fields that surround their North Carolina home. And to make sure
that they blended the best elements of the past with today’s mod-
ern elegance, they chose Cambria to reflect the home’s refined sense
of sophistication.
The Hookers grew up together in King, North Carolina, a pied-
mont town of about 6,000 people, 10 miles northwest of Winston-
Salem. “We were high school sweethearts,” says Pam. “After college,
we moved back to King and lived there for about eleven years.” Dur-
ing that time, the couple had two children, Harrison and Gabrielle,
both now teenagers. Sam is the chief operations officer at Ridge Care,
which offers assisted and independent living options to seniors in the
region. Pam worked as the human resources director at the North
Carolina YMCA until about four years ago, when she opted to stay
home and care for Harrison and Gabrielle.
As their children entered their teenage years, Pam and Sam
began to feel that their home in King was too small for the family.
They began to explore the possibility of building the home of their
dreams. When they mentioned the idea to Pam’s father, Thaxton
A pre-planned home designfrom architect William
E. Poole produced a housewith such remarkable
architectural detail and sucha powerful old-fashioned feel
that many observersassumed it was built in the
19th century, which is exactlythe response Sam and Pam
Hooker were hoping for.
hen Pam and Sam Hooker decided to build
their dream house, they knew they wanted something
that radiated old-fashioned southern charm. So it is no
W
28
Harrison, a great opportunity presented itself. Pam’s grandparents
had been tenant farmers on a large farm in Westfield—a neigh-
boring town about ten minutes from King. “They lived in a small
tenant house and raised tobacco and managed the farm for the fam-
ily that owned it,” Pam explains. When the farm’s owners decided
to sell the farm fifteen years ago, Thaxton bought it. He and Pam’s
mother, Allene, continued to grow tobacco and other crops on the
farm’s hundred-acre expanse.
“When Daddy found out that we were going to build a new
house, he said, ‘you know you are already going to inherit part of
the farm, so why don’t you take it now and build the house there?’”
Pam says. The Hookers were delighted by the prospect and quickly
took Thaxton up on the offer and work began on the new house in
late 2007. Building their home on a working tobacco farm fit the
Hookers perfectly. “My parents grew tobacco over at the farm while
I was growing up, though we lived in King at the time,” Pam ex-
The Hookers used Cambria throughout their house, including PrestonTM inthe guest bathroom (above) and WindsorTM (right, and opposite, right) onthe wet bar that sits in an alcove between the dining room and the kitchen.
Countertop color: PrestonTM
plains. Her father operated under a sharecropper agreement with
the farm’s owner to grow tobacco. After they purchased the farm,
her parents took up residence in a log cabin located just a stone’s
throw from the new house. Sam had also worked for tobacco grow-
ers when he was younger. “So we’ve both worked around tobacco
since we were kids and, of course, it’s just part of the local envi-
ronment,” says Sam.
Pam’s parents continued to work the farm until recently. Now
the productive acreage is leased to other farmers who continue to
plant and harvest tobacco. “So this year we had great big fields of
tobacco across and to the left of the house,” says Pam. “It’s going
to stay a working farm, that’s our plan.” For Sam, having working
tobacco fields around the house is simply an added bonus. “I think
it adds historical credibility to the house,” he says. “This land has
been growing tobacco for almost a century, maybe more. I like the
idea that it’s going to continue that way.”
29
popular in the late 1800’s that many people simply assume that
the house is more than a century old. “We actually have had a
number of people who have driven up to the house and they think
that it is an old plantation home that we are remodeling,” says
Pam. In fact, according to Pam, the house bears a striking re-
semblance to nearby Cone Manor, the former home of the
southern textile magnate Moses Cone, whose gleaming white,
13,000-square-foot 1901 mansion is a North Carolina landmark.
While it’s one thing to want a house that might seem like it’s
been standing for a century, few people want the headaches
that come with a truly old home. The Hookers, with consider-
able help from general contractor David Allen, avoided most of
those troubles by melding modern building technology into old-
style décor. All of the home’s exterior surfaces, for instance, are
made of Fypon, a polyurethane mixture created by blending iso-
cyanate and resin. Fypon can be molded into almost any shape,
design or texture. The principle advantage of fypon is that it mim-
ics the appearance of natural wood, but is entirely resistant to
mildew, insects, pests, and rot. “So we won’t have problems with
termites in the future,” says Pam, laughing. Thus the Hookers’
home looks like a century-old plantation, but won’t have to have
extensive amounts of exterior woodwork replaced every few years.
In true plantation style, upon entering the Hooker home, one
encounters a grand foyer with a sweeping staircase and chandelier.
At a total of 7,200 square feet, the home is spacious and airy. “On
the second floor we have the large glass doors so that you can go
out into the terrace,” says Pam. Throughout the house, hardwood
floors emphasize the home’s historic feel. Pam says they stained
Countertop color: WindsorTM
he charm of locating their majestic plantation-style
home amid working tobacco fields wasn’t the only motive
driving their choice of location. The Hooker’s farmland
comes with panoramic views. The house has large verandas,
as well as a second-floor terrace, which maximize the family’s enjoy-
ment of the surrounding landscape. To best fit this majestic setting,
the Hookers chose a preplanned home design from Wilmington,
North Carolina–based architect William E. Poole. “I started on the
Internet and looked at hundreds of house plans,” Sam says. “One of
the things that we really wanted was a house that looked like it had
been sitting there for a hundred years.” Sam ultimately settled on a
house plan called “Verandas,” which blends modern openness and
convenience with classic southern style. “I kept coming back to that
plan,” he explains. “Every detail of the house seemed to fit perfectly
with the Colonial look we wanted.” Indeed, the house’s design so
closely resembles the Colonial Revival-style architecture that was
T
30
the doors a dark color to complement the floor. “Our painter had a
hard time with that,” she recalls. “He said he really didn’t want to
do it, but we wanted it to have that really antique look, the sort of
aging that occurs with stain and wood.”
When it came to the kitchen, the Hookers decided not to devi-
ate from the design contained in William Poole’s house plan, which
called for a large kitchen with a curvy central island and lots of
countertop and cabinet space. “I didn’t want stained wood cabi-
nets,” Pam explains. While the Hookers scrupulously followed the
specifications of the house plan, the overall look of the kitchen was
the result of a collaboration with Melissa Jessup of BL Cabinetry,
the cabinetry design studio at Rural Hall, North Carolina-based
Brannock-Lynch Lumber Company. “They were really excellent,”
says Pam. After deciding on green as the right color for the cabinets,
Pam, Sam, and Melissa set about looking for the right countertops
to match the cabinet color. “We looked at a lot of different options
from granite to other quartz products,” Pam says. Ultimately, she
and Sam settled on Cambria. “The thing that attracted us to Cam-
bria was the depth and vibrancy of the colors,” Pam says. “Other
products had similar colors, but not the depth that Cambria has.”
The Hookers choose KensingtonTM for the kitchen countertops. Sam
agrees that Cambria was the perfect choice, especially for the
curved island. “I was impressed that Cambria could be so easily cut
to that odd curve, and yet still look so natural,” he says. “I appreci-
ate Cambria’s functionality in addition to its great look.”
“Aside from the great color depth, the other thing that made
me choose Cambria was that it doesn’t have to be sealed,” Pam
adds. “I’ve been to other people’s kitchens that had granite coun-
tertops, which had been sealed, and you could clearly see variations
in the surface from the sealing process.”
The Hookers also selected Cambria for the countertop in
the wet bar that sits in an alcove between the kitchen and the din-
ing room. The wet bar’s cabinetry is rosewood, painted a distressed
black to give it an aged appearance. “We knew we wanted a cop-
per bar sink and we used bronze-colored faucets, so we wanted a
countertop that would bring these colors together and the Cambria
WindsorTM did just that,” Pam says.
The Hookers also put Cambria in the guest bathroom, and upstairs
in the children’s bathrooms. In the guest bathroom, which features a
combination of black and white cabinetry— mostly a distressed black
31
with a washed out white trim—Cambria’s marvelous color depth
helped pull together the color scheme by blending seamlessly with
the cabinetry and wall color. “The Cambria countertop is gray (Pre-
stonTM) and we painted the walls a pale gray to match,” says Pam.
Upstairs, Pam took pains to match the Cambria countertops with
the colors used in the floor, walls, and cabinets to give each child’s
bathroom a unique look. “In Harrison’s bathroom, for example, we
used Cambria’s LancasterTM , which has dark gray tones that work
well with the hues of brown and copper in the slate on the floor.” In
Gabrielle’s bathroom, the Hookers opted for Cambria’s Wilshire
RedTM to complement the more feminine color scheme.
Pam says she worked closely with the contractor and salespeo-
ple at the cabinetry and tile stores to ensure that the work on the
house went smoothly. “Probably the biggest key to pulling it all to-
gether, from selection of cabinetry, to paint color, to countertops,
was taking samples of the cabinet colors and the Cambria colors to
the tile store to make sure that everything was going to work to-
gether.” The process took time, but saved them trouble later on.
“We didn’t end up saying ‘oh, I hate that paint color,’ or ‘I wish
we’d chosen a different color for the countertop,’ once it was in-
stalled, and then have to go back and change it,” Pam says. “There
was a lot that we tried to do on the front end and during the selec-
tion process to make sure we didn’t end up with too many cases of
‘I wish I had done this or that.’”
Once their dream house was finished, in November of last year,
the Hookers began the task of moving their family from the old
home in King, to the new house in Westfield. “Gabrielle and Har-
rison actually adjusted to the new house a lot easier than I did,”
Pam recalls, laughing. “They really fit right in.” Gabrielle in par-
ticular, quickly adopted a new morning routine. “She gets up every
morning, eats her breakfast, and then goes to visit with her grand-
parents—whose cabin is just 300 yards from the house—for a bit
before she goes off to school.”
“I’ve been fortunate in life to have many opportunities,” says
Sam. “But this home really is a dream come true for us.” He adds
that leaving their old home, with all of its memories—especially
from when the children were young—was difficult. Still, this mag-
nificent new home, with its elegant exterior and old-fashioned
charm, offers the Hookers a chance to write another wonderful
new chapter in their family’s story in the years ahead.
Countertop color: KensingtonTM
The elegant curves of the main island countertop were no problem for Cambria and the KensingtonTM pattern blendedperfectly with the green cabinetry aound the perimeter of the kitchen. The result was a highly functional space,perfect for the preparation of food, of course, but also great for hanging out and maybe even doing some homework.
32
33
hen Cambria announced in October
2008 that Floform Countertops would be
the inaugural inductee to its Lexus Partner
Program, the choice seemed natural enough. Floform is a
full-service kitchen renovation company specializing in
hard surface countertops with locations across Canada’s
western provinces. It also more than meets the Lexus
Partner criteria of sales success, commitment to market-
ing, and exceptional customer service. But, like any busi-
ness that has survived for more than 40 years, Floform
had to endure its share of growing pains along the way.
Luckily, given the choice to simply stop growing or try
springing up in a new direction, the folks at Floform
chose the latter.
Most entrepreneurs can describe a moment when they
first knew they had it—a sticking point where ambition
and idea coalesced and a business was born. For Ted
Sherritt, that moment was less about what happens
when things stick than what happens when they don’t.
“There was a change in the adhesive
industry” is not the answer one expects when
asking the Chairman and CEO of a thriving
company how he came to his current station
in life. A career accountant for much of his
adult life, Sherritt wasn’t even born when
brothers John, Harry, and Frank Dyck
founded Floform in 1961. He would come to the business 34
years later as the generator of its rebirth.
“Those early years were very pioneering,” says Frank
Dyck of Floform’s fledgling days as a fabricator and
installer of laminate countertops in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
“[Laminate] was a new product for the industry.” It caught
on quickly. After a few years in a less than ideal storefront
in Winnipeg (“In today’s terms we talk about a building
like that as a matchbox,” says Dyck), Floform moved to an
all-concrete building across town more accommodating to
their purposes. (“It was like Fort Knox compared to that
first building.”) While brother Harry left Floform in 1969
to begin a career as a contractor, Frank and John Dyck
went on to open their second branch in Edmonton, Alberta,
in 1980. Locations in Calgary, Alberta, and Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan followed within the decade. The brothers
were marching west.
But their march almost ended in the early nineties when
the effects of that aforementioned ‘change’ in the adhesive
industry began to show in kitchens across
Canada. Floform countertops installed years
earlier with glue relying on a new kind of
binding agent—one that lost its hold after a
few years’ exposure to oxygen—were quite lit-
erally coming apart at the seams. Like a drove
of cicadas emerging from their stay under-
Stickingwith it
Cambria Lexus Partner Floform Countertops has built somethingapproaching an empire by working hard and committing to its core values.
BY M A X B E R RY
Sherritt (in his Winnpegshowroom) praises
Cambria for the qualityof its training and for itsindustry-leading color
palette, which hedescribes as “fantastic.”
W
34
ground, countertops all over western Canada popped up, and the
noise was deafening.
The resulting loss in business prompted John and Frank Dyck
to seek some professional help with the refinancing of their com-
pany. Enter Ted Sherritt.
It was 1995 when Sherritt began working with the Dyck broth-
ers on the financial restructuring of Floform. By his own account,
Sherritt had “always been a little entrepreneurial,” but his deci-
sion to actually buy into the company he’d been charged to help
save was more than a little bold. “They were running out of
money fast,” says Sherritt. “John was over 70 then, hanging in
there, making sure they got through it.”
Still, the move made sense. “We were getting on in age,”
Frank Dyck says of he and his brother, “and maybe didn’t have
our P’s and Q’s in order [for retirement].” Sherritt helped with the
P’s and Q’s, and provided Floform—and the sizable staff the
Dycks had amassed throughout the years—with something else
the company needed: a future.
Thanks in part to some venture capital and a restructuring of
the company that saw several branch managers become partial
owners, Floform began to recover. But it’s hard to imagine the
most rigorous financial restructuring doing the job of responsible
customer service. It was in this regard that the Dyck brothers
truly impressed Sherritt.
“Lots of people would have gone bankrupt and started again,”
he says. “That just wasn’t in their nature.”
What was in the Dycks’ nature: extending the warranty on
every Floform countertop that had peeled as a result of the faulty
adhesive and offering replacements at a deep discount. By 1998,
Floform was back in the black.
Sherritt and his branch managers bought out John Dyck
shortly after the restructuring of the company and Frank retired
in 2000. “I had a ton of respect for [them],” Sherritt says. “They
were exactly the kind of people you’d want to do business with.
They built a great tradition. All I had to do was carry it forward.”
He has carried it across what he calls the “prairie provinces.”
In addition to Floform’s locations in Winnipeg, Edmonton, Cal-
gary, and Saskatoon, 2008 saw the opening of new facilities in
Regina, Saskatchewan and Vancouver, British Columbia.
That’s six cities in four provinces—all home to a company that
looked for a moment as though it would be undone, in a stroke of
painfully literal irony, by a batch of faulty glue.
t may not be a coincidence that Floform’s rolling expansion
has coincided with the addition of natural stone surfaces—
like Cambria natural quartz—to its product line. It was in
2003 that Floform began fabricating and installing granite coun-
tertops. Quartz was added in 2004 and, in the five years since, has
become the fastest-growing part of Floform’s business.
“Granite has different lines,” says Sherritt, referring to the
stone’s natural ridges and weak spots. “The things that make
granite beautiful are also what make it unpredictable. Quartz is
easier to work with and it’s stronger than granite.”
The desire to gain as much knowledge as possible about this
new product inspired Sherritt, in late 2005, to send 12 employees
I
Cambria UniversityCraftsmen from Floform—along withabout 200 other quartz dealers—have all sharpened their skills at Cambria’sone-of-a-kind training institute.
You wouldn’t know it by looking, but a non-descript building in St. Peter, Minnesota,houses the facility where more than 200North American quartz dealers have senttheir fabricators, foremen, and sales teamsto hone their very distinct craft. Fourteenmiles from Cambria’s main plant in LeSueur,it is the headquarters of Cambria University.
“The University is all about business train-ing. I’m responsible for making sure our programs are meeting the trainingneeds of our partners,” says Cambria U Operations Manager Doug Wilson.Dan Kortuem, former Cambria U Operations Manager and now Project Man-ager, Fabshop by Cambria, agrees: “Whatever [our partners] need, we can doit,” he says . He isn’t kidding. Cambria University’s curriculum is built toinstruct North America’s quartz dealers on every facet of the design, fabrica-tion, installation, marketing, and selling of the surface. The university, as itstands today, officially opened its doors on January 1, 2006, though Cambriahad been offering less formal training courses for a couple years prior to that.
At its inception, there were three basic courses: one for fabricators,one for installers, and one sales course. But the University’s course cata-log grew to match the needs of Cambria’s partners. The university nowoffers seven courses, geared toward everyone from office-bound busi-ness owners to hands-on installers.
Structuring course work around Cambria partners’ day-to-day needs isthe university’s specialty. “We have a core program, which we publicize,” saysWilson, of the U’s fluid approach to partner training, “but if one of our part-ners needs to customize a course to fit their needs, we’ll help them with that.”
This occasionally means going out into the field to work with dealersin their own facilities, as instructors did a couple years ago to help crafts-men at Floform get the best use of their own equipment. Wherevercourses are held, Wilson and Kortuem take a great deal of pride in theirinstructors, whom Kortuem refers to as “practitioners of the art” of quartzfabrication. The typical Cambria U instructor has hands-on experience inseveral steps of the quartz process; a machine operator has worked infield measurement, and knows what each job has to do with the other. It’san appropriately holistic approach to teaching a long and careful process.
The approach is working: 81 companies visited the U in 2008 alone.That’s up from 72 in 2007 and 62 in 2006. And from all of these compa-nies, Cambria University has raked in a grand total of zero dollars intuition money. In a show of Cambria’s commitment to lasting, ethicalpartnerships, all classes are offered free of charge to Cambria partners,whether there is one person taking the course or a dozen. Talk about alesson in customer service. “I would say Cambria U is an innovation initself,” says Kortuem. “I know of no one with a system like ours.”
tion (ISSFA). It was through ISSFA
that he met Luke Moore of Seattle-
based fabricators Fineline Pacific. The
two struck up a friendship and, in
May 2008, Sherritt became a partial
owner of Fineline. The former
accountant with the ‘little’ entrepre-
neurial streak is now a partial owner
of businesses in two countries. The
deal means increased resources for
both companies, and it will deepen
the well of experience for Floform;
gangbusters as the last few years have
been for the Canadian company, Fine-
line has been fabricating stone for a
decade.
But all this growth doesn’t mean
Sherritt has lost touch with his prede-
cessors’ spirit. Frank Dyck, now 75,
still comes by the office from time to
time, often bearing donuts, to see how
things are going. “I’ve been known to
pick up a few dozen donuts and then
not eat any,” Dyck says, alluding to
the crowd he draws when he pops in to
Floform’s Winnipeg store. “Everybody knows me. I avoid going
too often because everybody wants to talk to me. I’m wasting too
much production time. I shouldn’t loiter around. They have a
business to run.” There is, for the record, an audible smile in
Dyck’s voice when he says this that suggests he won’t be handing
off his donut-buying duties any time soon. This should please
Sherritt, who is more than happy to have him around: “He’s
proud of what [he and his brothers] started and he should be.”
The Dyck brothers can also take pride, one hopes, in the fact
that traces of the business they started 48 years ago remain, and
aren’t likely to disappear any time soon. “We have at least half a
dozen craftsmen with forty years of experience,” Sherritt says.
“Forty years…” he repeats the number as if he can’t quite get his
head around it, as if this man with three separate accounting
degrees might have made a mistake in his math. “They’re fan-
tastic people,” he continues. “They can work here for as long as
they want.”
If the past has taught Sherritt anything, it’s that the future
will be unpredictable. It’s the people around him who carry the
more important lesson: that there are few attributes more valu-
able—in business or in life—than the ability to endure.
35
to the then brand new Cambria University. (See sidebar, oppo-
site.) Taking part in Cambria’s specialized fabrication, installa-
tion, and sales courses, Sherritt’s staff learned their product inside
and out. “That experience was important to us because we were
brand new to the stone game,” says Sherritt.
In the past three years, Sherritt has sent nearly 40 employees to
Cambria U and the number continues to grow. “Once a year we
send a sizable group,” he says. Cambria has reciprocated by send-
ing their own instructors to Floform’s fabrication facility, to work
with fabricators and installers in their own space with their own
equipment.
This back-and-forth is indicative of the strong partnership
between the companies. Sherritt, for his part, sees several bene-
fits to the relationship. “I like that they’re North American
made, the quality of their training, their colors—Cambria’s color
palette is fantastic. They have the best colors for our market.
When you open boxes of other colors and theirs, people gravitate
toward Cambria.”
If Sherritt and his staff were new to the stone game in 2003,
they’re something like seasoned pros in 2009. Sherritt now sits on
the board of the International Solid Surface Fabricators Associa-
Gerald Schade, Floform’sinstallation manager forthe Winnipeg region,applies Gorilla Gripclamps to ensure a secureand level fit at the joint oftwo soon-to-be-installedCambria surfaces.
36
All Inc. stands by its name. The St. Paul, Minnesota-based kitchen products distributor is
the one and only place you need to go to create, remodel, or simply improve your kitchen.
The company boasts what may be the largest kitchen-related showroom in the entire Mid-
west—more than 18,000 square feet of cabinetry, appliances, countertops, sinks, faucets,
tiles, and furnishings virtually guaranteed to satisfy almost any homeowner’s wildest
dream. And, of course, All Inc. is one of Cambria’s largest retail partners.
The company is the creation of two brothers, Mark and Jim Rutzick, who co-own the
business. They built All Inc. out of their father’s existing business, which dates back to the
1940s. The elder Rutzick had built a sizeable business operating washers and dryers in
local apartment buildings. “When I decided to join the family business in the late ’80s, I
was looking for an opportunity to do something different,” says Mark Rutzick. “We had a
relationship with General Electric (GE) since we bought laundry machines from them.
So I just started going to apartment buildings selling refrigeration and replacement appli-
ances,” he explains. His brother Jim eventually joined him and they formed All Inc. in its
current configuration in 1988.
The company’s path to its current
positon of prominence has not
always been smooth. “A couple of
years ago, we were prepared to
merge with another company, but at
the last minute, it fell through,”
Rutzick recalls. “The other company
walked away and ultimately was liq-
uidated.” With the home construc-
tion and remodeling market in free
fall, the failed merger put All Inc. in
some difficulty. “We had to close two
showrooms and scale back the busi-
ness,” Rutzick says. “It was a sort of
‘come to Jesus’ moment for us.” In the face of such setbacks, many
companies might have chosen to go conservative and avoid any
kind of risk. But in January of last year, when All Inc. received an
opportunity to acquire several new lines of kitchen and home
products, including Sub Zero and Viking, the Rutzicks essentially
chose to go on the offensive, investing additional funds to add
showroom space to accommodate the new lines, burnish the com-
pany brand, and do whatever it took to maintain the company’s
reputation for quality and service. That gutsy decision and the
philosophy behind it—invest in
quality, maintain your standards, or
get out of the business—have res-
onated with consumers and business
partners alike. (“We really
impressed some of the representa-
tives from the big suppliers like GE,” Rutzick notes.) And the
added investment is obviously paying off. “We are now the biggest
kitchen remodeling distributor in the region and are very well
positioned going forward,” Rutzick says.
While the average homeowner looking to remodel his or her
kitchen, or just seeking to upgrade cabinets or appliances, cur-
rently represents the smallest slice of All Inc.’s business, Rutzick
says the company goes out of its way to bring these consumers in
and make the kitchen remodeling process as easy and painless as
Building on a business started by their father, Mark and JimRutzick have built All Inc. into one of the largest kitchen andbath dealers in the Midwest. BY C H R I STO P H E R F R E E B U R N
All Included
Dealer Details
37
possible. (Apartment manage-
ment companies, general con-
tractors, large-scale home-
builders, and small single-home
contractors make up the bulk of
the business.) “We have kitchen
designers here so we will
design entire kitchens for con-
sumers from A to Z and put
them in contact with any of a
dozen or so contractors whom
we deem reliable,” Rutzick
explains. All Inc’s designers
can take a kitchen’s measure-
ments and enter them into a
computer-aided design (CAD)
program that will create a
three-dimensional rendering of
the kitchen. The designer and
homeowner can then use the
rendering to explore how dif-
ferent design options would appear in the new kitchen.
Rutzick takes pride in the fact that All Inc. offers an enormous
selection of Cambria products. “We believe we have one of the
largest selections of Cambria displays in the marketplace,” he says.
Part of that pride comes from the fact that Cambria is a Minnesota-
based company as well. “Having Cambria manufactured and head-
quartered in Minnesota is pretty exciting for our state,” Rutzick
says. “But while we always like to support local companies, we
stock Cambria because the quality of Cambria products has created
huge demand. We are excited to have Cambia on our showroom
floor. It gets a lot of attention,” he adds.
According to Rutzick, All Inc.’s relationship with Cambria
began some years ago when Innovative Surfaces, a countertop fab-
rication company based in Hastings, Minnesota, brought Cambria’s
products to their attention. Now Cambria products abound
through out All Inc.’s massive
showroom. “We have this beau-
tiful Cambria countertop with a
chiseled edge,” says Rutzick.
“Most consumers we encounter
haven’t seen a chiseled edge on
Cambria—they’ve done it to
granite for years—and it’s a
beautiful look,” he explains,
noting, “A lot of people don’t
even know what it is because it’s
so unique.” The rough-hewn
chiseled edge appears on more
than just kitchen countertops,
according to Rutzick. “We also
have a Cambria bar that’s very
exquisite which also has a chis-
eled edge. We just think it’s
very special.”
Visitors to All Inc. can view Cambria products in a variety of
different kitchen and non-kitchen settings. Rutzick says that great
care was given to creating the perfect environment for homeown-
ers to see kitchen products. “When you walk into our showroom,
it’s a very soothing environment,” he says. “We have light jazz
playing in the background all the time and the lighting is
designed to mimic what the typical homeowner would find in his
or her own home.”
Rutzick notes that he expects All Inc.’s retail business with
individual homeowners looking to remodel their own kitchens to
increase dramatically in the next few years, in part because of the
consumer interest Cambria products attract. “We have the best
environment for them to see Cambria products in realistic
kitchen settings, which gives people a good idea of how it will
ultimately look in their homes,” he says. “That’s a big advantage
and it brings people in.”
As demonstrated byhis massive show-
room featuring a widevariety of kitchenproducts, Mark
Rutzick (relaxing nextto one of his manyCambria displays)strives to make All
Inc. a one-stop shopfor builders andconsumers alike.
Stuff of Dreams
Accessorizing your home with beautiful but useful objects can be an easy and stylish way to add color, texture,and character to your favorite rooms. Here we present a collection of exceptional items for your consideration.
Elegant Extras
1 2
1 . W I L L I A M S S O N O M A H O M E S O L I D C A S H M E R E T H R OW($298.00; wshome.com; 50” x 70”, 4” fringe)Designed for luxury lounging, this throw has theexquisite softness and warmth of pure cashmere; awaterweave pattern adds subtle visual texture. Dry-clean. Imported. May be monogrammed for an addi-tional $6 charge.
3 . KO H L E R K A R B O N A R T I C U L AT I N G FAU C E T($990; us.kohler.com)A kitchen faucet serves a multitude of functionsand the Karbon Articulating Faucet is versatileenough for all of them. Engineered to hold anypose, the Karbon offers a complete range of motionthrough its five pivoting joints. Extend the faucetcompletely to fill a tall vase, lower it into the sinkfor food preparation and cleanup, or position it any-where in between; the Karbon allows you to guideand lock in water flow with absolute precision. Foldit compactly out of the way when it’s not in use. Or,if you’re looking for a conversation piece, don’t.
3 . FA R M H O U S E D U E T P R O(Approx. $2,400 – $4,000 depending on dealer and finish; nativetrails.net)Add a unique and functional work of art to yourkitchen with a pair of striking hand-hammered cop-per sinks from Native Trails. Available in brushednickel and antique finishes, these basins are easilymaintained—much like Cambria countertops—withmild soap and water. Recent studies have shownthat copper has remarkable natural antibacterialproperties, which actually kill bacteria such as E.coli in a matter of hours, while stainless steel andother traditional surfaces may allow them to sur-vive for weeks. Elegant, safe, durable, easy to main-tain—Native Trails basins will add style to yourkitchen for years to come.
4 . V I K I N G F U L L- H E I G H T W I N E C E L L A R(Dealer information at vikingrange.com)Different wines must be cared for in different ways,as any serious collector knows. Luckily, this 30”-widecellar can accommodate the needs of 150 of yourfavorite vintages. The exclusive TriTemp storage sys-tem provides three independent temperature zones,preserving different types of wine at optimal servingtemperatures. Each zone is adjustable between 43and 65 degrees Fahrenheit and the electronic con-trol center constantly monitors the temperature ineach zone while maintaining a 60-percent humiditylevel. While the cellar’s ultraviolet-resistant glassand black interior protect wine from harmful light,and bottles are stored horizontally to keep corksmoist, you can still show off a label or two: Convert-ible shelves and low-intensity interior lighting areexcellent for bottle display.
4
3
40
5 7
6 8
Stuff of Dreams5 . K I TC H E N CO M P O S T C R O C K($24.95 for crock, $5.95 for filters; homesteadhelpers.com)Everybody knows that composting does goodthings for the environment and the garden, butwith this ceramic crock, it can also do downrightelegant things for your kitchen. The one-galloncrock is much more pleasing to the eye than astandard plastic bin and, thanks to its glazed inte-rior, it’s also stain resistant, meaning you won’tneed to replace it any time soon. Simply tossscraps and leftovers into the pot and empty it in thecompost heap when it’s full. The crock’s impervi-ousness to stains, along with the charcoal filters(included, with replacements sold separately) alsoensures that going green doesn’t require bringingunfortunate odors into your kitchen.
6 . R E I S E N T H E L M I N I M A X ILO N G H A N D L E B AG($8.99, reusablebags.com)This versatile shopping bag expands from miniwhen closed and compressed (5.5" x 2.5" x 2.5")to maxi when open for use (25" x 15.7" x 10.4" /capacity: 26 lbs). Designed in Germany, thesebags are especially popular abroad, in countrieswith bans or restrictions on plastic bags. Its sleekdesign features long handles so you can carry itover your shoulder, and it is made of rip-stoppolyester for extra strength and longevity. TheMini Maxi Long Handle bag neatly folds into itsown zippered container, with a bit of room tospare for keys or other small items. The containeralso has a clip to attach to a key ring, belt loop orother "hookable" surface. Put one in your glovecompartment, desk drawer, coat pocket, purse orbackpack and you’ll always be prepared.
7. ACC E N T S BY C A M B R I A(CambriaUSA.com; contact for pricing)Available in complementary colorsand fashioned from the same quartzas Cambria countertops, this line ofhome accessories provides addedcharacter to rooms already outfittedwith Cambria surfaces. The Accentscollection’s cabinet knobs, drawerpulls, paper towel holders, andswitch plates for electrical outlets,phone jacks, and light switches allowfor style continuity with Cambriacountertops. Items like cheese plates(shown) and coasters, meanwhile,bring a touch of Cambria class to anyroom in the house.
8 . B E A R C R E E K G L A S S O C E A N S I N K(Small: $1,795; Large: $1,895; bearcreekglass.com)Every bathroom has a sink; the BearGlass Ocean sink, as the company’sweb site puts it, is a focal point. Anorganic take on more modern, uni-form bowl sinks, the Ocean is hand-crafted, meaning yours will be entirelyunique to your home. Made from 100percent recycled glass, the sinkranges in size from 16" to 19" acrossand 4" to 6" deep. Available in 10 dif-ferent colors, ranging from clear toblack, and with custom colors avail-able upon request, the bowl can befashioned to lend an artisanal touchto any décor.
9. A S C A S O D R E A M E S P R E S S O M AC H I N E($750; ascaso.com)Whether it’s a latte, cappuccino, or straight shot of espresso, the AscasoDream’s 16 BAR water pump has the power to extract every bit of flavor fromyour favorite gourmet coffee. The machine works with ground coffee or ESEcoffee pods, and the professional grade frothing tip, pressure gauge, andportafilter allow you to brew café quality espresso drinks at home. The topsurface of the machine, with a metal rail designed to hold nine cups, evendoubles as a cup warmer. But there are pleasures beyond the coffee: TheseDream machines, at once retro and new age, are works of pop art in them-selves. Ascaso’s “Crazy” collection features the Ladybird, available in red oryellow with black polka dots, and, as shown here, the Cow.
10. WO O D M O D E A N D S H OW P L AC E WO O D F I N E C U S TO M C A B I N E T RY(Retail locations, products, and pricing information available at showplacewood.com & wood-mode.com)There is no better companion for a quartz countertop than beautiful customcabinetry. Look no further for yours than these two fine cabinet makers. Billedas “employee owned” and “environmentally responsible,” Showplace WoodProducts allows customers to select their “skill level”—from “I’m real new atthis” to “I know what I want”—and provides them with the appropriate amountof guidance from there. Showplace works with all the classic species of wood:maple, cherry, hickory, and oak—as well as lyptus, an exotic hardwood sustain-ably grown on environmentally managed plantations in South America. WoodMode, meanwhile, uses kilns in its own highly integrated manufacturing facility to dry their lumber to optimum moisture levels for a variety of homeapplications. The same level of finesse and attention to detail is maintained byWood Mode’s craftsmen through the multi-step finishing process, so the cabinets in your home will be tailored precisely to your tastes and needs.
9 10
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The roots of our company go all the way back to 1943,
when Stanley Davis, the grandfather of our CEO and
President Marty Davis, purchased a small business in
St. Peter, Minnesota, called the St. Peter Creamery. In
1959, at age 19, his son Mark began driving the new
bulk milk pickup route for the factory. Mark’s four sons each began
working in the growing family business while in high school, driv-
ing trucks, filling barrels, and learning first-hand the values of
hard work and innovation that continue to contribute to the success
of Davisco Foods International to this day. After more than 60
years, Davisco still brings an exceptionally professional approach
to the business of food processing.
We founded Cambria in 2001, allowing us to bring Davisco’s rich
heritage into an exciting new industry. It took extraordinary vision
to recognize how making cheese could prepare us for producing nat-
ural quartz surfaces. But in just eight years, we’ve been able to par-
lay our manufacturing expertise into one of the country’s fastest
growing businesses. On a daily basis, Cambria relies upon critical
lessons from our dairy business—commitments to innovation and
efficiency, attention to detail, the critical role of longstanding rela-
tionships—to build and grow the new enterprise.
Partnership is a fundamental value at Cambria. It is not a term
we use lightly—it is the mindset and motivation for how we run
our business. We have known all along that the path to success in-
volves partnering with companies just like ours: small businesses
made up of dedicated people. Together we maintain integrity, pur-
sue excellence, create opportunities for growth, work hard, and re-
mind each other that we are all part of something bigger.
Our relationships enable Cambria to build passion for our brand
outside our organization. Our partners learn about our dedication
to quality, the nature of our people, and the strength of our product.
Cambria fabricators transform Cambria into magnificent counter-
tops and our installers become our bridge to the consumer. All are
master craftsmen.
TOGETHER WE REMAIN ABSOLUTELY COMMITTED TO:Innovation: We drive innovation through attention to detail. This
focus has enabled Cambria to develop an industry-leading color
palette. Exceptional colors don’t happen overnight, but require a
team-wide commitment to exploring new avenues. New colors in-
volve both employees and partners, who bring valuable perspec-
tives. This input, combined with new technology and ongoing
research and development, yields a dynamic quartz color palette.
Not only do brilliant Cambria colors unite our team, they also ul-
timately inject our brand with a distinct advantage.
Knowledge and learning: Continued learning has always been
a priority. At the center of this knowledge-sharing initiative is
Cambria University, located in Minnesota, where employees,
fabricators, installers, and partners visit to learn about our brand,
our culture, and our products, and about how to improve their pro-
duction processes and how to best promote and sell our products.
The Coreof Cambria
With its roots in the family dairy business, Cambria has always retained a passionate commitment to talented people, to key relationships, and to excellence in every phase of its business.
43
Quality: Quality is a bottom-line issue at Cambria. But it means
more than manufacturing a great product. Our pursuit is detail-
driven in order to enhance quality at every turn. This means that
our facilities aren’t just clean, they are immaculate. We don’t re-
spond with speed, but with urgency. Our people don’t simply
work hard, they also look and act in a professional manner at all
times. Quality is built into the Cambria culture. It supports our
brand, strengthens and maintains our relationships, and keeps us
focused on excellence.
Vision: Because we’re a family business, we can have long-
term vision. We’re not a “ninety-day dividend” company. We
can take a patient approach to our business, allowing expertise
to develop, relationships to gel, and people to grow. Cambria’s
people and partners, linked together by a common passion for
our product and our brand, remain dedicated to our fundamen-
tal mission to create the best natural quartz products in the
marketplace.
Team Cambria: (above, l. to r.) Bruce Gebhart, General Manager; JeffHovanec, VP Business Development; Mackenzie Weldon, Market Represen-tative; Matt Davis, Executive VP, Business Partner Services; Marty Davis,President and CEO; Kathy Ordahl, Market Representative, Jim Ward, CFO.The dragon logo (left), like the company name, has its roots in Wales, theancestral home of the Davis family.
Cambria production facility lobby, Le Sueur, Minnesota.
44
TheColors of
STRENGTH &DURABILITYCambria is 93% natural
quartz, one of the hard-
est minerals on Earth. In
fact, Cambria is twice as
strong as granite.
MAINTENANCE FREENo sealing, polishing or
reconditioning is
needed. Simply wash
with warm water. It’s
that simple. Plus, unlike
granite, Cambria will re-
sist stains from
common food items
such as coffee, tea, and
wine.
FOOD SAFEUnlike granite, Cambria
has been certified by
NSF International as
safe for use as a food
preparation surface. Cam-
bria is nonporous, and
therefore nonabsorbent,
making cleanup easy and
preventing food and
moisture from penetrat-
ing its surface — the
main source of growth
for harmful bacteria.
ALL NATURALCambria is created from
pure natural quartz, an
extremely hard stone
crystal. In fact, quartz
is one of the hardest
non-precious stones that
can be found in the
earth’s surface.
GUARANTEEDAs the only producer of
quartz surfaces in the
United States, Cambria
is covered by a Lifetime
Limited Warranty.
For more information
and to locate a dealer
near you, visit
CambriaUSA.com.
AshfordTM BradfordTM BrownhillTM ChathamTM CranbrookTM KensingtonTM LancasterTM
THE QUARRY COLLECTION
With an eye-catching and industry-leading palette, Cambria has just the right colors, eitheralone or in combination with others, to enhance the look and feel of your home environment.Samples can be ordered online or at your local Cambria kitchen and bath retailer.
NottinghamTM OxfordTM Park GateTM PrestonTM ReadingTM SheffieldTM SomersetTM
SouthamptonTM SuttonTM VictoriaTM WindsorTM
45
Cambrian BlackTM CherrybrookTM DoverTM FieldstoneTM HazelfordTM OakhamptonTM SussexTM
THE DESERT COLLECTION
WhitehallTM YorkshireTM COMING SOON: Exciting new colors in Spring 2009!
Bala BlueTM Brecon BrownTM Bristol BlueTM Burton BrownTM Caerphilly GreenTM Cambrian GoldTM Cardiff CreamTM
THE CLASSIC COLLECTION
Cardigan RedTM Carlisle GreyTM CarmarthenBrownTM
Coswell CreamTM Flint BlackTM Hyde ParkTM New CastleTM
Oxwich GreenTM Snowdon WhiteTM Stafford BrownTM Talbot GreyTM Tenby CreamTM Welshpool BlackTM Wilshire RedTM
Cambria
46
TheBeautyof Cambria
As evidenced by the flood of submissions received for the Cambria Lifestyles Contest heldin 2008, Cambria’s distinctive quartz surfaces are rapidly growing in popularity. The 13winners will all appear in our sumptuous 2009 calendar. To view this year’s winners, visitCambriaUSA.com and click on “2009 Lifestyles Contest Winners.” To submit your ownCambria design for the 2010 contest go to CambriaUSA.com/lifestylescontest.
2009 CAMBRIA LIFESTYLES CONTEST WINNERS
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Grand Prize / January (opposite)RESIDENTIAL MASTER BATHROOM Fallston, MDCOLOR: YorkshireTM
DESIGNED BY: Blue Arnold, CKD CBD - Kitchens by Request, Jarrettsville, MD
February (above)STETSON MANSION KITCHENDeLand, FL COLOR: BrownhillTM
DESIGNED BY: Alice Designs For You, LLC Jacksonville Beach, FLFABRICATED BY: Discover Marble & GraniteOrlando, FL
October (left)CAFÉ CAMBRIA Air Canada Centre, Toronto, ONCOLOR: VictoriaTM, YorkshireTM, & CherrybrookTM
DESIGNED BY: ZAS Interiors, Toronto, ONINSTALLED BY: Quartz Surfaces Toronto-Mississauga, ON
48
In all my years in the business, I’ve seen
every design mistake. So, with new clients I
tell them to sit down in their space with a
glass of wine, a cocktail, or a cup of coffee
and write down adjectives to describe the
pace and feeling that they want to achieve in
the room. Then they edit that list down to
just five or six words, which become the cri-
teria for making all design decisions. If the
goal is a “practical, functional” dining room
in a home with young children, for example,
then glass-top tables and pure white carpet-
ing would be poor design choices. A “cool,
sleek, light, and open” kitchen, on the other
hand, might call for more glass and stainless
steel as well as neutral, light-colored coun-
tertops. This method helps me justify my
style choices to my clients and for the do-it-
yourself designer it helps keep them on
track so that they don’t end up buying things
on impulse that are out of scale or the wrong
color for the space.
Billy Beson , A.S .I.D., is CEO of the Min-
neapolis-based interior design firm Beson
Kading Interior Design Group.
KnowYourAdjectivesTaking the time to define the most critical goals you have for your interiorspaces will help you avoid a wealth of design mistakes.
By B I L LY B E S O N as told to REED RICHARDSON
Beson chose Snowdon WhiteTM Cambriacountertops for his condo near Palm
Beach because “white is the color ofthe whitecaps on the ocean andbecause a neutral room indoors
makes the colors outside really pop.”
Last Look
CAMBRIAPresident and CEOMARTIN DAVIS
Director of MarketingSUMMER KATH
Communications SpecialistJAYME MADSON
PUBLISHING PARTNERTouchpoint Media, LLC Chief Executive OfficerSTEVE FARBMAN President JIM MCEWEN Senior Vice PresidentDAVID JENSEN ControllerLINDA ALLISON
EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief MORIN BISHOP Art Director BARBARA CHILENSKAS Managing Editor REED RICHARDSON Senior Editors/Writers CHRIS FREEBURN MAX BERRY Photo Editor ALAN GOTTLIEB Production Manager WADE MARTIN Production & Sales CoordinatorGINA KRUSEMARK Contributor JILL KIRCHNER SIMPSON
PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS: COVER: Dominique Vorillon; page 1 (both): Courtesy Cambria; page 3: Dominique Vorillon; page 4: Courtesy Cambria; page 5: Peter Dazeley/Photographer’s Choice/Getty Images; page 6 (bot-tom): Courtesy Cambria; page 7 (top): Courtesy Cambria; page 10 (bottom left): Michael Arnaud/Beateworks/Corbis; page 10 (bottom right): Johnny Bouchier/Getty Images; page 12: Beat-han/Corbis; page 13: Stockbyte/Getty Images; page 14: Courtesy Cambria; page 15: Courtesy Cambria; page 16 (top left and top middle): Elizabeth Whiting & Associates/Corbis; pages 16-17(bottom): Courtesy Cambria; pages 18–20 (all): Dominique Vorillon; pages 22–23 (all): Dominique Vorillon; pages 24–31 (all): Gil Stose; page 32: Ian McCausland; page 34: Courtesy Cambria;page 35: Ian McCausland; pages 36–37 (top): Susan Gilmore; page 36 (inset): Brandon Rowell/Courtesy All Inc.; page 37 (both): Brandon Rowell/Courtesy All Inc; page 40 (bottom right): Cour-tesy Cambria; page 42: Courtesy Cambria; page 43 (top): MMG/Todd Buchanan; page 43 (bottom): Courtesy Cambria; pages 46–47 (all): Courtesy Cambria; page 48 (top): Courtesy Cambria.
CAMBRIA STYLE is published three times per year by CAMBRIA, 11000 West 78th Street, Eden Prairie, MN 55344. Copyright © 2009 by CAMBRIA. All rights reserved. Reproduction inwhole or in part without the express written permission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. The publisher assumes no liability for products or services mentioned herein.