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"ELLE DECOR: When you&amp;#039;re designing a room, where do you start? JEFFREY KERNS: I start with the art, not the furniture or the wall color or the rug. The art is always the most important element. A painting has to hold the wall by itself.  ED: You&amp;#039;ve never actually been trained in design, is that right? JK: I studied painting but eventually went into advertising and marketing in the film industry and have designed posters for movies like Titanic and The Doors\u2014which is how I&amp;#039;m able to collect art. Designing homes is my hobby. I&amp;#039;m a frustrated architect at heart. ED: Tell us about your house in Palm Springs. JK: It was built in 1971 by a local architect named Stan Sackley, whose trademark was putting the garage door perpendicular to the street. It&amp;#039;s a three-bedroom, 3,450-square-foot ranch that looked like a typical California drive-through bank\u2014and it sits on the oldest golf course in Palm Springs. I get golf balls in my pool. ED: What was it like when you first saw it? JK: I&amp;#039;m not sure if I bought it from the original owners, but they&amp;#039;d been here forever and had decorated the place around 1980, with Kelly-green wall-to-wall carpet, lots of smoked mirrors, and big banana-leaf wallpaper. I tore it all out.  ED: Did you do a lot of demolition? JK: I didn&amp;#039;t change the footprint that much. I bumped out the kitchen wall 18 inches to accommodate the sink counter. I took down a wall that divided the living room in half and expanded the master bath into what had been three small spaces. I also put in new terrazzo and bamboo floors and extended the sliding-glass doors at the front and back of the house as much as I could.  ED: You also added ecofriendly elements? JK: I installed solar panels on the roof and replaced all the old windows with double-pane UV glass, and I used bamboo flooring in the bedrooms and baths, for example.  ED: Did you live in the house while the renovation was being done? JK: No. I did that once, and I never want to do it again! And it&amp;#039;s a good thing, too, because it took more than two years.  ED: Did you keep the palette neutral to enhance the art? JK: Yes, but also I wanted to cool the place off visually. Palm Springs is hot, so keeping the interior color scheme light and neutral meant that the greenery from the golf course makes a bigger impact by contrast. This house is all about breaking down the indoor-outdoor barrier.  ED: Is everything in your house rare? JK: No, not everything. I don&amp;#039;t care if something is a copy. The breakfast table is a Formica imitation of a classic Saarinen table that was in the house when I bought it. The &amp;quot;lampshades&amp;quot; on the outdoor lights are planters from IKEA. Some of the pieces are vintage. A lot of the furniture comes from Modern Living in Los Angeles.  ED: Your mix includes everything from antiques to an Eero Aarnio Ball chair. JK: I think of the furniture as timeless. Good design, like good art, never goes out of style. One of my favorite pieces is the chaise in the master bedroom, which was designed by Antonio Citterio in 1979 and is still being made by B&amp;amp;amp;B Italia. I inherited the traditional armchair in the living room from my mother, who was an antiques dealer in L.A.  ED: I like your sense of humor. In your house, you can&amp;#039;t always tell what&amp;#039;s art and what isn&amp;#039;t. The motorcycle in the living room, for example, is a sculpture by Sean Duffy. JK: I like that ambiguity. The &amp;quot;tea set&amp;quot; on the dining table is a sculpture by Andrew Lord. But the hand-painted plaster figure of a diver in the bathroom is not art. It was a display mannequin in a pharmacy in New York. The Wieki Somers bathtub is fully functional, of course, but it&amp;#039;s also a work of art called Bathboat, made in an edition of 25.  ED: Did you really move all the landscaping from the front of the house to the backyard? JK: I don&amp;#039;t really like walls, but I do like privacy, so I created this berm of desert plants that frames the view of the golf course and the mountains beyond. This way I can see nature, but the golfers on the 13th fairway can&amp;#039;t watch me swimming au naturel!   What the Pros Know  \u2022 Kerns bought his whole kitchen from Varenna Poliform. &amp;quot;It was the floor sample,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Most showrooms will sell you their floor samples for 60 to 70 percent off. It&amp;#039;s a great secret source!&amp;quot;  \u2022 &amp;quot;The three things that date a design fastest are lampshades, bathroom tile, and curtains,&amp;quot; says Kerns, who usually likes to leave windows bare, although he loves &amp;quot;open glass doors with billowing white sheers.&amp;quot;  \u2022 &amp;quot;Terrazzo is a perfect floor surface for the desert,&amp;quot; Kerns says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s versatile and relatively economical. It&amp;#039;s cool underfoot and low maintenance so you can walk in from the pool and drip all over it. White terrazzo has an incredible effect on the ambient light.&amp;quot; Click here to see photos of Jeffrey Kerns&amp;#039;s exotic beach house. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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