FEATURED
Cover Story
Residential Tech Today: Before you started
hosting One of a Kind, you were a language
therapist. Can you tell me a bit about what
led you to hosting the program?
Grace Mitchell: Well, I’d always loved design
and I was an interior design major for a year in
college and then my advisor basically told me
that it was a dying field and that I should choose
something else. And so I took that advice and
chose a major, ended up getting a Bachelor of
Science and then a Master’s. And then I was
actually working on my doctorate in audiology
when we found out we were expecting. So I
thought I would take a little bit of time off. And
then we ended up having surprisingly four kids
in three and a half years. I just didn’t go back,
and I just felt more invested in my home since
I was spending more time there.
I started doing a lot of home projects and
writing about it on a website, my blog at the
time. My blog sort of turned into private design
clients, and then I started getting my work
published. I worked for magazines for a while,
writing and designing for them and for brands.
And then I got a call from the production
company about potentially doing a show, and
here we are.
RT Today: The stories of the people that
you work with are always so important to
your design projects. Do you have one story
in particular that really stands out?
GM: That’s such a hard question because I
feel so connected to all of my homes and to all
of these people and their stories. I don’t know,
it’s really hard to pick one.
It’s important to me – and it’s always been
important for me in my job – to feel like I get to
create, but it also needs to have meaning. And
even when I was a language therapist, I got to
create curriculum for these babies and their
families. A lot of the time when I entered the
picture, the family had just found out that their
child was deaf or hard of hearing, which is, as
you can imagine, was a very difficult transition.
And so I got to create family activities for them
to learn how to communicate with their baby. I
loved that job because I got to create, and it had
meaning, and now I get to do design, which I
love so much. I love all things related to the
home, but I get to make sure that it has
meaning.
Jan/Feb 2020 | Residential Tech Today 43