Today we’d like to introduce you to Annie Kines.
Hi Annie, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
When my husband and I decided to sell our first home three years ago, we were working on a home addition that we had designed ourselves. Once my husband completed construction, I really enjoyed the home staging part of the process and leaned in to using vintage and coastal items that you don’t commonly see in a staged home. I wanted someone to really be able to visualize living a certain lifestyle there. Soon after selling that home, we began designing and building what we were sure would be our next and “forever” home, but we decided to again sell the home, seeing a path that would enable us to launch full-time into the business of home design and construction. That’s when the business that my husband and I share, called Kines Home Design, really began.
Parallel to Kines Home Design, I began Tidal Interiors, first as a home staging & design consultation business, and then as the more focused interiors division of KHD. I rarely take on clients now, and instead draw the floor-plans and elevations for our new homes, design the interiors, and stage the homes at the end of each build. I also source vintage furniture and decor, and have recently begun making contemporary collages from vintage books. It’s been a really organic and enjoyable evolution.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
At times extremely bumpy and other times smooth sailing. The smooth part has been that I feel completely at ease in this role of designer / curator, and absolutely love working with my husband. We make a great team with our combination of construction & finance knowledge (him) and design & arts background (me). But it has been anything but easy – seeking investors, searching for land, acquiring permits, hiring contractors & a full-time foreman, learning the ins and outs of kitchen & bathroom design, sourcing tile / lighting / fixtures, and digging into healthy building materials which we like use in all of our projects, to name a few of the hurdles. It is a game of logistics. We are in our third year of business and are just a couple of weeks away from completing our 7th and 8th projects and have just begun our 9th. Six of those projects have been brand new single-family homes including our own. We are tired! But we see the path forward and it’s empowering to be creating something of our own that we enjoy.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I find it a bit hard to describe, but my design style is something like vintage coastal with a European influence. I love mid century modern furniture and decor, I love vintage seascapes, old books, wooden furniture and ceramics, I love warm tones of browns and greens with flashes of terracotta and red-orange and blue. When designing my home, I haven’t just stuck to one design style. For example, in the kitchen we have a primitive prep table instead of an island with rattan pendant lights hanging above it, olive green cabinets, and fluted terrazzo tiles on the walls that give it a tropical feel. It’s a blend! I have always appreciated good design and color, so my style has distilled down into what it is today and I’m sure it will keep evolving.
Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
Since my husband and I started on our own, and because I’ve battled autoimmune and neurological conditions for several years, I haven’t been able to network or connect with other designers / creatives like I would have liked to. Luckily, we have found our way and because design style is pretty personal, I’ve been able to develop that over time simply by observing what’s around me and on social media. The connections we have made in our work have happened organically or from my husband’s time working for Habitat for Humanity and we enjoy working with nice people from sub contractors to lenders to real estate agents. There’s no reason not to be kind in this business.
Contact Info:
- Website: tidalinteriorschs.com and kineshomedesign.com
- Instagram: @tidal_interiors and @kineshomedesign
