2019 Detroit Home Design Awards
Judges | Details | Exteriors | Interiors | Commercial Design
Homes | Rising Star | Reader’s Choice
Up-and-Comer
Kelly Konoske
When Kelly Konoske was a young girl, she’d sit at her family’s kitchen table with her dad, builder Rob Mossburg, and sketch houses.
“I grew up around building and design,” says our Brian Killian Rising Star and president of Cottage Company Interiors. Cottage Company Interiors is a design firm and a sister business of The Cottage Company, which offers construction and remodeling services.
Both of her parents, Rob and Vee, work at the Harbor Springs-based firms (as do her grandfather, aunt, and husband), but in the past year, Konoske took over the reins of the interior design component from her mother, who now occasionally does design work
for spec homes. Her new title is a position Konoske has been working toward since joining the firm six years ago, when she left behind a job in marketing in Los Angeles to return to Michigan. The challenge was convincing her husband, a native Californian, to do the same.
Konoske, who was born in California, grew up in Kansas, and spent summers in northern Michigan, says that as a designer she gets to exercise both sides of her brain (she has a business degree from Pepperdine University and a master’s of business from Chapman University). She’s also taken courses from a UCLA extension program toward a master’s degree in interior design/architecture. “Nature’s beauty is found everywhere I look,” says Konoske, who weaves those observations into her designs. The result is beautiful spaces that call to mind a Michigan beach on a pretty summer’s day. Fresh, light, textured, and comfortable are the hallmarks of this up- and-comer, who’s also green-certified.
This summer, Konoske will reveal a private label furniture line called Cottage By Kelly. Her furnishings will, naturally, evoke a coastal feel; lakes, bluffs, dunes, and beaches inspire this new casual-but-elegant line, all within the cottage aesthetic.
“It’s comfort with high design,” she says.
