Designers Can Find the Good Goods

By Lori Tobias Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
Reprinted from the Rocky Mountain News. June 19, 2000

Where to shop when money is no object?

"When money's no object, you shop at the nicest antique stores, like Eron Johnson's," designer Lane Elisabeth Oliver says.

"You go to the nicest fabrics, which would be Brunschwig & Fils, Pierre Frey and Nancy Corzine. You take your clients to showrooms, like Nielsen-Mayne in the Denver Design Center."

In the kitchens of the rich, you can expect to find SubZero refrigerators, Viking ovens and cook tops, granite countertops, Ann Sacks tile and custom cabinetry with hardware that might cost as much as $40 per piece — which may not sound like much until you consider that it's nothing for a kitchen to require at least 100 drawer pulls.

For sofas, designer Pam Kelker steers her clients to Nielsen-Mayne, TJ Hooker or the Wendy Boyd showrooms at the Design Center, and for those custom fabrics, she says, "You skip looking at price and go straight to the velvets, silks and tapestries. Instead of having an area rug made, you go to Rugs by CPA or Lillihan and pick out an Oriental rug."

According to bathroom specialist Klaudia Spivey, "You'll see a lot of Italian sinks and accessories, and steam showers with body jets — lots of body jets. For the shower head, you'll find a drench head, which looks like a large sunflower and requires 25 to 27 gallons of hot water per minute. There are custom-made tubs designed to accommodate the users and you can put custom jetting in them, which can include anything from micro jets to a bubble channel along the bottom. "They even have a remote control that allows you to call the house and tell the tub what temperature you want and the time you are going to be there so the tub will be full." Also, in upscale bathrooms: custom robe warmers, radiant in-floor heating, heated tub decks and fog-free medicine cabinets with shaving cream heaters.

Money may not buy everything, but it definitely covers most of the details.