Hi, my name is Courtney Katilus and I am an Interior Designer located in Buffalo, NY. I’ve always loved design and being creative. Growing up I was always looking to make my room look nice and feel warm and comfortable. Looking back, I wouldn’t have chosen a bright turquoise color for my walls and my ceiling in my childhood bedroom, however, I’m grateful that my parents allowed me to have the creativity that let me try many different things! When I got married and moved out into our own apartment, the first thing we did was ask the landlord if we could paint and put new carpet in our bedroom, he graciously said yes, and now that I am a landlord myself, I realize I too would agree to my tenants improvement to the property!

Later the next year we bought our first home, moving in and changing things up, projects becoming a little more in depth as we could do a lot more owning our home. We were able to purchase new furniture and really allow for me to change up what I thought could use improvement. We did our first renovation adding in a bathroom, which happened to be my very first design project from scratch. When the market got hot, we did choose to sell that home. When we were doing showings, our realtor mentioned several times people asked if we had our home staged to sell! This, of course made me feel really happy that people liked my home and everything I designed, and put effort into. This was the beginning of really starting to put an effort into wanting to be an Interior Designer. We purchased our next home, which is our forever home we live in now, knowing that it needed some renovations, first thing when we moved in I changed every color of the walls, they were really bad, I can’t even describe how awful they were. (Tip: Paint can make a huge change to a room! Never underestimate a great paint color and finish!) We started with our master bathroom, it took a long time and we slept in our spare bedroom putting our mattress on the floor for 12 weeks! The finished project made it so worth it! Next, we did new flooring and paint in our basement, after putting half the flooring down we needed to rip it all up and start again, story for another day. (Tip: Always plan for the unexpected when doing renovations!)

Most recently our kitchen we just finished this past year. This was my first real Interior Design Project, where I treated it like I was presenting to a client, I sketched out my vision then revised, revised, revised, got a countless amount of quotes on various items, visited vendors, got samples, put together mood boards, worked with the architect and contractor throughout the whole project. After four months, our kitchen was finally done just in time for Christmas! Since then I have received so much support, encouragement, and compliments! Over the last year and a half I have been taking three online courses to help me be the best I can with doing what I love! I am almost complete and can’t say enough of how hard but rewarding it has been, I have learned so much, from sketching, to learning and using photoshop, to Canva, and so much more! I am so grateful to my teacher and Interior Designer, Ula Burgiel from London, England. I didn’t even understand how much goes into “having an eye for design”. I’m very excited for the many projects I get to be apart of coming soon and can’t wait to share them all with you! Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me with any questions and always feel free to share my info with a friend or family member!