WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — As 21 teams led by designers transform a 9,218 square-foot home in West Palm Beach, WPTV got a behind-the-scenes look at this year's Kips Bay Decorator Show House.
The effort returns to Palm Beach for its sixth year, this time on property overlooking the Intracoastal in the Northwood Shores neighborhood at 3240 N. Flagler Drive.
The show house will open for a special preview on Feb. 23.
It will then open to the public for a fee of $40 from Feb. 24 to March 19.
The director of special events and corporate partnerships, Nazira Handal, took WPTV on a preview tour as the home was overrun with a flurry of designers, general contractors, sponsors and craftspeople.
The event benefits the Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County.
"We’re very excited, this is our sixth year in Palm Beach. We got an amazing location, our first time we’re on the water," Handal said. "We’re back in the Northwood neighborhood and we have 21 designers from all over the country doing the house."
The process happens more rapidly than a typical renovation.
"They have pretty much eight to nine weeks to transform the house, with new bathrooms, new kitchens, and each one brings their own GC (general contractor), so you’re talking 200 people at any one time working in the house," Handal said. "So, it’s challenging but it’s a great event and it’s for an amazing cause."
The creativity in details is awe-inspiring each year.
"And that’s what’s so exciting is the details and even when we open to the public, and I have been here all this time of renovation, every day you see a new detail that you have not seen," Handal said. The designers put so much into this just to create a dream space. Details in the ceilings, a lot of lattice work, a lot of earth tones, the designers bringing the outdoors indoors. You feel that Palm Beach feel in the colors. It’s going to be a special house."
The house includes a massive master suite with a large closet, rooms with balconies and waterfront views, and a large pool that sits over the Intracoastal.
"It is pretty much like a design museum for a month on all the new trends that are coming up. So, you’re going to see all the new colors—pinks and the blues and the greens," Handal said. "You’re going to see a lot of the new trends that you have not been seen before."
Handal said she thinks of the children who will benefit every day whiles she's on the work site.
"That’s why all the hard work, at the end of the day, it seems so minimal, because you know that in every single day that we are changing lives of the 18,000 children that we serve," she said. "Between New York and the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club, and here, the Boys & Girls Club of Palm Beach County, all the efforts and the tears and all the long nights, it’s worth it."
