LVP’s “backyard“ is not what one pictures for most people’s backyards.

Nor is the front yard. Nor is the closet. Nor is the [fill in the blank]. It is fun to look, however.

And I'm over "puppy gate". The dog is fine, move on already.

Agreed!

I'm a fan of the show, which sends my husband fleeing from the room whenever I watch it. He can't understand how I can decipher what the housewives are saying when they're all screaming at each other. :-) My daughter just went to LVP's "cocktail garden" in Las Vegas and paid $17 for a small drink, which probably helped pay for that kitchen. I love the pink cookware and I'd love to paint a guest bedroom a pale, pale pink. Hmm....

One of my favorite Real Housewives shows, i catch up with it on demand. Husband won't watch. I fell in love with that range when I saw it!

I believe the range is a La Cornue, Grand Palais 180 that starts around$60k

https://www.joannehudson.com/cook/la-cornue/la-cornue-grand-palais.html

https://lacornueusa.com/chateau

The pink cookware is LeCreuset

ETA: I've read that Lisa is an excellent cook

It's gorgeous but out of my price range, wouldn't even fit in my kitchen

Have never seen the show but I can't imagine mini ponies safely roaming that particular back yard. There must be an out of sight paddock. :)

I am a fan of this show and many of the other Real Housewives shows, especially NY and New Jersey. Guilty pleasure for me. I haven’t watched this week’s episode (it’s on the DVR), but I love LVP’s new kitchen. Love the pink accents, which are the norm for her. I would expect nothing less from LVP.

Some Villa Rosa house porn

https://www.bravotv.com/home-design/real-housewives-beverly-hills-lisa-vanderpump-villa-rosa-photo-tour

I'll admit to watching...and you don't have to justify a post here Shannon :) It's all good.

I will say that I love both, but then I do more than merely boil water for tea in mine. If I was in her position, with chefs and caterers, I would want less fluff and more utilitarian. Much like the mansions of a century ago, kitchen aesthetics wouldn't matter too much. The beauty would be in the function and practicality.

Nice eye candy, though.

I have to cringe when I see people putting marble tile on the backsplash behind the stove. One splash of anything acidic (like spaghetti sauce) and it's stained forever.

I was just looking at the Cooper Pacific Kitchens website’s info about the 3 designers who work there. Quite impressive backgrounds. I compare them to some of the KDs I see on here - a year or two spent in a kitchen & bath showroom and pouf! you’re a ”kitchen designer”. And we see some of the results of that on this Kitchens Forum. There’s a thread going right now from someone with “custom cabinets” and a kitchen designer. Responders on that thread are being nice and just addressing the specific question from the OP, but it appears from the photos of the kitchen in progress that the OP’s KD is inexperienced and not very good.

It seems that mostly people at very high income levels are going to get the caliber of KDs that Lisa Vanderpump got. Does that mean the rest of us can’t? If that’s true, then thank goodness for this Kitchens Forum!

https://www.cooperpacific.com/info

Here's a game for you. Can you spot all the La Cornue ovens on the KD website?

Great, I now have a new way of avoiding work and wasting time. Thanks a lot, Shannon ;-)

I think the kitchen looks great. It's bright and a nice mix of traditional and contemporary.

As for the quality of design help people can afford, it's a very sad situation, not helped by the fact most people's taste is informed by HGTV instead of serious designers and there is quite a herd mentality, always obsessing about resale.

OTOH it is a lot easier to take chances on more striking designs if you can afford top-notch help and the amount of money spent is not terribly important to you, so if you change your mind in a few years you can start over without any consequences.

I like looking a super high end kitchens and try to figure out aside from the La Cornues or special marbles, what are the design elements that set those spaces apart from the more pedestrian ones I am capable of envisioning on my own. Christopher Peacock, for example uses the mirrored accents like LVP quite a bit. The hardware used on those projects tends to be pretty distinctive to. It's amazing what a big differences some of these smaller touches make.

The price for the slabs was about $17k, and the show said the slabs are marble. But that doesn't include fabrication and installation. Given what is going on with that marble - the waterfall, the backsplash, the extra-thick counters - I expect the fabrication and installation were costly. If anyone has an idea what that fabrication and installation would cost, I would be curious to know.

I was based my comment "got off cheap" because when they were selecting slabs at the stone yard it was said they needed 6 slabs. $17K for 6 slabs is cheap. I went to three stone suppliers to see marble slabs, and none were less than 4K each. The prettier slabs are 6K/7K+

I was SO OVER Puppygate by the second show!

I think her kitchen is actually a kitchen that is functional as I do believe it is used for Something other than show. I like it and the personal touches like the pink Le Creuset cookware. I am surprised that Lisa actually designed the original kitchen since it doesn’t have anything to do with her style or the rest of the house. Eitjer the kitchen was there when they moved in or she got snookered into selecting what was trendy five years ago.

I think the kitchen actually would cost more than $300,000 but I imagine she got substantial discounts for showcasing the Cooper Pacific. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was for for cost. LVP is in the restaurant business and is not going to be paying actual retail.

i visited their showroom when I was designing my kitchen and They had nice stuff for sure but what was really great was spexperiencing the way cabinets could be customized to function in really great and unusual ways. i can’t be 100% sure if they have a closet line or if it was another showroom, but I was much more impressed with the closet setups including a personal dry cleaner type of revolving rack so that stuff could be hung high and then brought down to you. Also some incredible lucite organizational accessories.

This was the kitchen of her former BH home - 17,000sq ft that sold for $29 million

Lovely, but underwhelmed

Chijim - I think LVP has said a couple times that she never really felt completely comfortable in that home, and found it too large and not bright enough. That kitchen's black countertop was the height of style in the early-to-mid 2000s when she must have put it in. The table and chairs in the background are in her current home, just off the kitchen - reupholstered of course, but LVP doesn't just throw everything away haha!

Edited to add: well, just googled the table and chairs, and now I am not sure whether they are the same. The table is definitely different. The chairs look to be the same.

PREVIOUS HOME:

CURRENT HOME:

Pics of all her homes. LVP

Lovely, but underwhelmed

I like this one better than her new kitchen. It has the great windows over the sink, and while it's still large, it's proportionally appropriate for human beings. It has some color, not just a sea of white.

We are at Reagan airport flying JetBlue home to New England. While waiting in the Pre-check TSA line, there was some commotion in front of us. Then a gentlemen barged through between DH and myself over to the other side. I recognized him as Ken, LVPs husband. Sure enough, the commotion in front of us was being caused by Lisa. She was setting off the scanner, no mater what she took off. After watching her go back and forth 3 times, they finally told her she needed to go through a different machine and be patted down. So she took her 6" pink sandals and went by me. Of course my DH set off the alarm due to his two knees. He ended up behind her in the other line. I waited for him to get through next to Lisa's entourage. Lost track of them after that. Good to know she travels commercial like the rest of us.

Fun celebrity sighting! Have a safe trip home.

I can't say that I've ever watched a "Real Housewives" of any flavor. "Comparison is the thief of joy," and all that. However, I can't say that any of her three kitchens here move me, excessively. I find them all tasteful and well presented, but more or less soulless. They seem temples of what can be done with a more-or-less unlimited budget, but not incorporating anything beloved or meaningful to the owners.

This might just be me, I suppose. I don't move every 5 years, I don't remodel based on trends, and I continue to love the things I love long after everyone else has found something new.

Oh, I would think most of us don't watch it to compare anything! We watch it as an escape and/or to see the houses and gardens.

We don't move often either. First home 20+ years, last home 13+ years. We've been married almost 38 years and still own the antique pieces we bought when we first married, as well as things throughout the years.

I find them all tasteful and well presented, but more or less soulless. They seem temples of what can be done with a more-or-less unlimited budget, but not incorporating anything beloved or meaningful to the owners.

Yes, I think the same thing -- but you said it better.

I find that criticism to be vague. I don’t know what you mean by “more or less soulless”, or what a kitchen would look like that has more of soulfulness. Can you be more specific? I look at my own kitchen, which I love, but it is not decorated with anything “beloved or meaningful”. I put those things in the rest of my home. What do you mean exactly - photos? artwork? children’s awards? Furniture handed down? All those beloved and meaningful things are in my home, but not in my kitchen.

I find LVP’s kitchen to be beautiful, interesting, and very much representative of her personality - which makes no bones about loving pretty feminine decor with a lot of luxurious finishes. It’s how she dresses, how she furnished the rest of her home, and how she is lucky to live her life (though from what I understand, she and her husband have worked damn hard for what they have).

@M Miller - I agree with your assessment of LVP's kitchen as well as her house. It is the antithesis of being a soulless place designed by someone who was only interested in trends and flashing money. It is obviously very expensive but it (and the rest of her house) are obviously also totally LVP - very feminine. I thought LVP's kitchen was an especially good rendition of a white kitchen that wasn't a complete cliche but had some distinctive personality. And, unlike some kitchens, it looks as if some thought was paid to actual functionality - and certainly the pink Le Creuset cookware is quite a bit of personality.

Admitted I am a Housewives fan but many of the other women also have homes which express their personalities. Dorinda's home in the Berkshires for example. Sonja Morgan's down at the heels townhouse certainly didn't lack soul - maintenance yes but putting aside that, it was a very homey space.

The homes in the Orange County franchise are more expensive builder development taste but that actually represents the souls of those women who are pretty much stupid tasteless nouveau riche women. If anyone recalls their visit to Thomas Keller's French Laundry where they looked at the menu askance and actually spit out some of the food one could have no doubt as to their stupidity and utter level of taste and sophistication.

It's beautiful, certainly. But it's a catalog of what's "in" this week, right down to the brand new Le Creuset in one of their newest colors. Probably to be shuffled out of the kitchen for a new shade in a few seasons. The other changeable elements are color-coordinated to the pink touches, or to complement. Right down to the apples (the green ones go much better with pink than red or yellow would).

Nowhere do you see a dog-eared copy of a cookbook that had been a grandmother's or aunts, complete with handwritten notes. Or a collection of vintage transferware on display. No treasured teapot that was a wedding gift, causing them to think of the giver every morning when it whistles. No tiles that came out of a building in a former home town incorporated into a backsplash. Heck, no favorite color incorporated into any of the hard fixtures whatever. Nothing that isn't very, very "now." Nothing that looks like she said to the KD, "I know it's out of fashion but I would like to do X." Not so much as a bead on the rails of her "classic white shaker cabinets." The stainless drawer fronts really add more "design" rather than more personality.

The original iteration of this kitchen looks like a restaurant. The new one, while lovely, reminds me of the "club level" room at a fancy hotel.

It's the kitchen of someone who is incorporating all of the designiest design, and yet it could be the kitchen of any woman who could write the check.

*shrug* As I said, it might be just me. (Or me and Mrs. Pete). And I don't watch the show or have the faintest idea who this woman is, so I can't comment on whether or not this kitchen is "her." It just strikes me as a kitchen that isn't really anybody. It's the ultimate model kitchen at a design trade show. I never said they didn't earn whatever they have (I have no idea what they do or what they have). There are immensely expensive kitchens that I drool over and am jealous of. This just doesn't happen to be one of them, mostly because of its cold, sterile qualities.

If you were familiar with LVP, you would know that pink is her signature color to the point of tackiness so that she is not selecting it based on its trendiness.

“right down to the brand new Le Creuset in one of their newest colors. Probably to be shuffled out of the kitchen for a new shade in a few seasons.”

Lots of assumptions and leaping to judge Holly Stockley.

LVP had that pink LC in her previous kitchen. Much of her furniture is from her previous house which she moved into in the early 2000s. There was a link upthread to a video (filmed at her previous home) in which she talked about how she has lived all over the world, and enjoys mixing things from her travels with antiques with new. She has never used a designer previously, and always did her homes herself, but with a kitchen she did feel the need for a KD - something we talk about all the time on this forum.

The stuff you listed as what you believe is needed in a kitchen might be considered fussy or clutter by someone else. But that should be OK, that’s why we are allowed to have different styles in our homes. No need to look down on a kitchen with reverse snobbery.

Sometimes people just need to vent. In a real life conversation, things don't sound as harsh as the written words,

This kitchen is very her.

All quotes from this short article, that shows she was involved in designing as well:

• "The kitchen came out just as Lisa had envisioned: She wanted lots of white marble and white cabinets."
• "Lisa was adamant that she wanted top-of-the-line appliances and polished nickel taps."
• "She is Lisa Vanderpump, after all, so we knew there were going to be some pops of pink."
• "If I’ve learned anything of late, it’s to do what makes you happy. Surround yourself by people and things that make you happy."

I can see why the first kitchen was depressing, and the new makes her happy. Other than being so dark and masculine (can't believe she ever agreed to it during construction), it looked like a restaurant. They own restaurants, so why would they want to come home to that kitchen.

I don't look down on it, and it isn't reverse snobbery. I just don't like it and find it cold and sterile. This is my opinion, and really not a reason to, correspondingly, insult me. But, you know, have at if that's what makes you happy.

OP here. I wrote in my OP "I know in advance there are going to be people who sneer, etc. at the lifestyle and the show. Fine, whatever. For me, it's an escape from some of my cares and worries - as is this forum! So sue me!"

I was so happy for most of this thread that the sneering at the lifestyle did not occur. As I mentioned a couple of times, the show, and the way LVP lives, give me vicarious enjoyment of things I would not be able to experience myself (nor could most people). It's fun! That's the point! Holly Stockley, while there were others on this thread who said why the kitchen wasn't their taste, you did add the jabs about shuffling and writing the check etc. plus your overall tone that were not the point. But M Miller, you escalated that snark unpleasantly.

Yeah I agree. Let’s not hate on someone else’s high end taste. I think the new kitchen is super chic! I may not be a lover of pink, but I still find the design aesthetically pleasing and high quality :)

The range of budgets on this forum vary greatly. Learn to appreciate all budget ranges — from the IKEAs-lovers and Craigslist furniture buys to custom built aficionados.

"But M Miller, you escalated that snark unpleasantly."

Huh? I didn't detect any snark in M Miller's comments.

What bothers me most about LVP's taste is that it's ALL her taste. Obviously, her husband gives her free reign to dress both the house, and him, in pink and to incorporate all things glitzy, but I would like to see a little more of his taste in their house. And maybe he doesn't care, or has no taste, or whatever, but it makes me cringe a bit to see a man surrounded by pink/roses/sparkly things...jmho.

Lots of men don't view life through American perceptions of girliness. Pink and flowers are not verboten to men in Europe. Doesn't Ben Pentreath have a pink living room?

My guilty pleasure is watching Escape to the Country or perusing the UK real estate ads. I watched one "Real Housewives" - no idea which city - once with my DIL. She loved the show. She is now an EX-DIL. It just doesn't float my boat.

But then I lived in LA for 3 years, and my husband taught at a then all-girl's private school where many in Beverly Hills went, and my own children went to a school in Bel Air which was filled with celebrities then and still is. DS went onto a then-all boy's school for 2 years. I hated all these schools and moved DD in the middle of 5th grade, I hated it so much.

We did go to church in Beverly Hills and I have a couple of friends who grew up and have always lived there. But all-in-all, I'm just not attracted to this kind of lifestyle or taste at all. Give me David Rockefeller's houses any old day! I actually like my own very modest kitchen far better than any of these of LVP. Good thing - I sure don't have her budget!

I agree with you Zalco...but that is not MY perception of manliness. And, having been born in the UK, I think it's many Brit's perception also.

I do enjoy Real Housewives occasionally simply for the reason that it's so far removed from my reality that it makes my mouth drop open. My brain struggles to process this kind of lifestyle.

I do love Yolanda tho and I think her ex-husband was a real **** for doing what he did to her.

ETA, yeah...I'm familiar with Jiggy.

bwahahahaha! @ chijim. #died

I have never seen the show (but sort of want to, now!). Green Designs - thank you for ID'ing the designer. I wonder if the inspiration came from this kitchen from this one; similar layout with the two islands and range at the end. Entirely OT, I really like these lights

"I would like to see a little more of his taste in their house."

I cannot count the number of posts here that have said "my husband wants no part of choosing anything for the new kitchen/house".

One of the delights of the show is how much Ken adores Lisa and indulges her and will defend her to his last breath. I still remember the flower-bedecked tree swing he installed as a gift for her. We should all have such a "non-involved" husband.

I also don't understand why people assume that this isn't Ken's taste or that he isn't comfortable with what she has chosen.

My father (and lots of other men I know) have very little actual interest in home decor as long as their basic needs are met. My father wanted a comfortable place to watch television and use the computer. Lest he be denominated as a complete MCP, he loved to cook - especially bread and pasta. When my mother died, he didn't touch a thing and while her home wasn't on Lisa's scale of frippery, it was overfilled with what Tom Wolfe once famously described as the "million dollar tchotchke" look :-).

I have absolutely no doubt that Ken loves the homes Lisa has created and does not secretly crave having brown leather Baracaloungers in his living room :-).

My father has a keen interest in home decor and cooking, and at age 80 he has honed both skills to an art. Never assume that gender determines interests or tastes. I like to think we've discarded that old fallacy.

"ken is in his late 70's"

Ken Todd is 73. He and Lisa have been married for 36 years.

Watching Housewives is my guilty pleasure. LVP's nickname is "Pinky" for her love of all things pink and is what she wanted to be called when she started the show. Producers didn't allow it. Her new kitchen is gorgeous and truly reflects who she is. I never thought the old kitchen fit with their style or with the rest of the house. According to production, LVP is a wonderful cook and often prepares meals during filming. I applaud them both for the tireless work they do in animal rescue worldwide.

Well, I don't get the assumption that it IS Ken's taste...goes both ways, right? And I'll stick with my guess that his taste is NOT her taste.

That house is ALL hers, whether that's due to her personality or his disinterest--I have no idea.

Anyone know where I can find those extra tall salt and pepper grinders that are lined up on her counter?

I'm curious ... this question is for the people who felt the kitchen was soulless. I'm not disagreeing; but, I would love to see an example of a kitchen that you feel has a soul. I'm not being snarky.