Kitty’s Corner

As Kitty Bartholomew leads a tour of her backyard, she makes one thing very clear: All plants that inhabit her soil must produce something--a flower, a food, a fragrance. There is no room for slacker flora in this woman’s garden.

The edict may seem strict, but it’s nothing Bartholomew wouldn’t ask of herself. She’s on the set of her television show while she knits a sweater while she’s on her cell phone while she’s thinking about what to make for dinner.

If it all looks pretty seamless, chalk it up to her filing-system brain, or the fact that she’s been juggling a regular TV gig and raising three kids for the last 10 years.

But the former interior designer and current host of her own show on the Home & Garden Television cable network doesn’t want to give the impression that she’s gunning for the I-can-do-it-all award. By her own admission, “I can’t just do one thing at once. I was born with this much energy. I’ve always got three or four different layers going at all times.”

It’s certainly been an asset. HGTV-aholics will recognize Bartholomew as the host of “Kitty Bartholomew: You’re Home,” a half-hour design and decorating show covering everything from making curtains out of puckered packing plastic to restoring Victorian houses to faux-finishing floors. The Los Angeles-based show combines guided home tours with interviews and easy-to-do projects.

One of the first shows to air on the almost 5-year-old network, “You’re Home” has a coveted prime-time slot twice a week, kicking off a one-hour block of design shows.

She pops up occasionally on other home-themed shows, as well as in magazines. She is the personality corporations covet as their spokesperson; currently she represents Glade and Pier 1.

Got Her TV Start on ABC’s ‘Home Show’

Pre-HGTV, the petite Bartholomew, with her trademark black-and-white striped hair, was a regular for six years (1988 to 1994) on ABC’s “The Home Show,” a five-day-a-week morning program with a “family” of experts; Bartholomew was the resident building, remodeling and decorating diva who wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty.

After a decade of advising the domestically inclined and challenged, Bartholomew’s bright-ideas bulb hasn’t dimmed a bit. She is still striving to give more and more to the viewers who depend on her expertise.

“I am so information-driven,” she says, “and I’m always on the lookout for it. I know that there are enough people out there who depend on me to give them good information, usable information. I have a very good sense of what people want to know.”

And what is that exactly?

“I don’t want to tell people what look is right or wrong, but within the margins of good taste I want to be able to empower them to be able to identify what their own unique home family life situation is and be able to make changes. Because you can make changes, even without spending a nickel. . . . People may not attempt the exact thing that I do, but money is not a reason to stop you from ever making changes in your life.”

Don’t doubt for a second that Bartholomew doesn’t have 101 ways to accomplish just that. She points out some in her own home: leaves plucked from the backyard and placed in a vase; last year’s Christmas tree, de-branched, recycled as a birdhouse post.

“When I was an interior designer, we did some very fine projects,” she says. “And it was fun enough, but it didn’t really get my juices going. What really got me going were my low-budget projects--that’s where I really became creative, and that’s where stuff came up through me that I didn’t know existed.”

A New Husband and a New Home

It still gets her going. In fact, she’s entrenched in a personal project that’s drawing on her creativity big time--a new house she just bought with her new husband, Jack Shakley, president of the California Community Foundation, a philanthropic organization. Blending their styles has been a hard lesson in compromise for Bartholomew, whose taste is decidedly English country, right down to the vintage stove, overstuffed chairs and wicker tables.

“Now that’s very Kitty,” she says, pointing to a cozy little corner nook that contains a slipcovered reading chair and a small side table. “And that’s very Kitty,” she says, gesturing to a barn-red distressed armoire.

Her husband, on the other hand, treasures his modern art collection and has little affinity for cute little collectibles. When they married on July 4, he sold his condo, she got rid of her craftsman bungalow, and they moved into this sunny two-story contemporary Santa Fe-style house in Santa Monica that they both love. High ceilings and copious wall space lend openness, but warm-tone tiles, wood furniture and lots of windows and glass doors keep it from being austere.

Bartholomew is intent on making everything gel, and so far the de Kooning doesn’t look out of place near the rustic wood bench. She leads a tour of the house, bounding from one room to another in her jeans, matching denim shirt and red shoes and belt. A hefty emerald-cut sapphire sits on her left ring finger next to a diamond wedding band. She points out where the trompe l’oeil painting is going in the living room, which chairs are on their way out, and how the garage is going to be converted into her office.

“Change is so good,” says Bartholomew, finally settling at the sturdy wood dining room table. “It’s hard for people--you treasure things. And for me, even though I’ve made my whole career out of design and things and creating things and making things look better and embellishing things, with my marriage and my great, great passion for Jack, I realize that, look, it’s just things. The most important thing is this wonderful relationship we have, so things aren’t going to get in the way. And we’re both working consciously toward that.”

Yet she taps her French-manicured fingernails on her coffee cup and does a humorous roll of her eyes when she talks about a piece of furniture her husband spotted in a catalog.

“We’ll see,” she says. “I guess it’s the working through it that makes you grow.”

Not that Bartholomew (who declines to give her age) has much opportunity to stay static in her life. The daughter of a retail executive, “from a nice family, not really, really wealthy,” she grew up in Grosse Ile, Mich., the oldest of three (“I’m the quintessential oldest Leo”). But there are no tales of little Kitty O’Connor fashioning chairs out of willow twigs or stipple-finishing her dollhouse walls.

“When I was growing up, I didn’t have a lot of creative pressures. I had a lot of freedom,” she says. “I climbed trees, I loved nature, and my grandmother taught me how to knit.”

But her otherwise idyllic childhood was shattered at the age of 7, when Bartholomew’s mother died in childbirth with her younger sister.

Learned the Traditions of Schoolmates’ Families

Growing up with a succession of stepmothers who “weren’t particularly maternal,” she became “like a sponge, filing things away like crazy in my mind.” At boarding school in Grosse Pointe, she soaked up every detail she could about her classmates’ lives: “The kind of furniture they had and the fabrics they would use. We had certain traditions in our family, but I loved learning that other families had so many other kinds of traditions.”

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Michigan State, Bartholomew went to Europe, where she sensed her fame and fortune awaited.

She went through her savings, then got a job working as a chambermaid in Switzerland and spent off-hours palling around with friends. She ended up marrying one of them, David Kramer, an actor and son of well-known tennis player Jack Kramer.

That prompted a move to Los Angeles, where the marriage eventually fizzled, but, “We’re still very good friends.”

Bartholomew returned to the retail world, working at Robinson’s as a merchandise coordinator. She married high school sweetheart Buzzy Bartholomew, and the two bought “the biggest piece of junk we could find for our money” in Pacific Palisades.

The house, a mishmash of add-ons, became her mission, and in a year the ugly duckling had been transformed into a swan. Two things helped: UCLA extension classes in interior design and the fact that “nobody every told me women can’t do certain things.”

Eventually she became a professional interior designer, working on expensive homes while having fun with her own cost-cutting solutions at home. She became friends with Sandy Hill, then slated to host a new ABC program, “The Home Show.” Hill asked whether Bartholomew would be interested in auditioning as the home building and design expert.

“Frankly,” she recalls, “I said I thought it was a sign of weakness to watch daytime TV, but I told her she could give my name to the producer.”

The producer was TV veteran Woody Fraser (“Good Morning America,” “That’s Incredible!” “Home & Family”), who was impressed with the energetic Bartholomew on their first meeting.

“She had the most wonderful personality,” he recalls. “She’s an ideas person, and you have to tell me how to make the house look great, brick by brick, wall by wall. Not just ‘Put blue paint on the walls.’ Kitty right away understood exactly what I meant. She rattled off what she had done in her own house, and I thought, ‘Oh, my god, that’s 30 shows right there.’ ”

Bartholomew’s lack of on-air experience didn’t daunt Fraser, even though it took her awhile to understand that the little red light meant the camera was on. A screen test proved she had the chops to handle the job, and, adds Fraser, “When she did a segment, [the viewer didn’t] say, ‘I won’t be able to do that.’ She showed you you can do that.”

Tackling enormous projects on “The Home Show” became routine for Bartholomew, who (with some help) built a home from scratch, renovated and furnished another house and granted contest winners their dream rooms. Also during these years, Bartholomew and her husband split.

“Let me tell you,” says Bartholomew, lighting up the first in a series of Merits. “There ain’t no pressure like being on a live television show week after week, with no hiatus, having to keep coming up with clever ideas and getting up at 3:30 in the morning, and then when one project is over coming up with another concept, so I could keep paying the rent because I was a single mom. That will make you a creative person.

“Did I like it?” She takes a long pause. “It served me well. I was able to reach deep down inside of me, constantly, constantly. I didn’t see a choice. Liking it wasn’t a factor. It was a challenge. What was the alternative? I wouldn’t work that week.”

It was a bittersweet ending when “The Home Show” was canceled in 1994. Bartholomew confesses the grind left her, if not burnt out, maybe a little singed around the edges. She wasn’t fearful about finding another job, since she had TV guest spots and her various spokesperson duties lined up.

Taking a Chance on an Unproven Network

HGTV wasn’t even on her wish list, since she hadn’t yet heard of the network--but a producer she worked with had, and pitched her.

Burton Jablin, HGTV’s senior vice president, programming and production, says the acquisition of Bartholomew “gave us instant credibility and recognition in our field. Hers was one of the first shows on the network.”

He credits her success to her lack of Hollywood schmooziness and the fact that she actually does the things she demonstrates on the show.

“It’s not like there’s a team of people behind the scenes doing this,” he says.

Jablin brings up the inevitable comparisons to uberpersonality Martha Stewart: “You have to give Martha Stewart credit. She sets a standard of excellence, and she does some wonderful stuff. But she is the teacher, and Kitty is your friend.”

Another way to tell the two apart is that Bartholomew doesn’t have a burning desire to conquer the planet with her ideas. In fact, she confesses that she’s not at all ambitious and that her “primary, most important job in life, period, no question, is motherhood. And it will be always.” From the beginning she has insisted on family dinners, even continuing them with her kids and ex-husband once a week after their divorce.

She doesn’t even want to win the lottery.

“I would be the most miserable human being, because the money would kill my creative spirit,” she says. “It would be the end of me. . . . The most important thing for me is to be happy in my life with my husband and children. I’m way more well known than I ever set out to be. And I hope I can keep doing clever things, and it’s nice if I can represent a product I believe in. I’d like to make more money if it’s possible. I don’t want to be gluing buttons on lampshades when I’m 85 years old.

“But things just fall my way. If I try and make things happen, they kind of get botched up if I set out to beat Martha Stewart or out-clever somebody. I’m not out to win anything. If I work hard and live my life, stuff happens.”

She’s Raised Her Kids to Be Independent

But there are things Bartholomew does worry about--mostly her children: Brooke, 21, a senior at Indiana University studying nonprofit .jstrategic planning; Bo, a freshman at the University of Arizona majoring in business, and 11-year-old sixth-grader Bridget, whom she calls Birdie, or “mini-Kitty,” describing her strong creative side.

“Teaching them to fly has been uppermost in my mind,” she admits. “I don’t want to keep them to my bosom; I want them to be independent, because I know I could go any time, like my mom went any time. I flirt with it, I smoke. But I think I’ve guided their lives; I haven’t imposed on them. I’ve given them choices.”

Bartholomew has scant recollections of her own mother, though she’s tried to conjure them up through therapy and hypnosis.

“But I believe she has always been with me, and I’ve always prayed to her--’Mymotherinheaven,’ like it’s one word. Her memory has been totally blocked, and that’s a sadness for me. But am I going to lose sleep over this anymore? I don’t think so. I know in my heart that she loved me greatly.”

If she leaves little room to feel sorry for herself, it’s because Bartholomew has a job to do--there are people out there who need her.

“One of the most common needs for people is to be psychologically happy, and it’s hard when your husband’s out of work or you’re sick. But just be rearranging the furniture or changing the sheets around--what a surprise! And you move a chair and you’re looking at the fireplace from a different angle. Suddenly, it’s an upper. And you didn’t spend a nickel.

“I think even if you’re wealthy, you don’t like to spend every penny. Where the real rewards in life come from are not from going out and buying a mink coat but from being creative with your life and family and home. Those are the real rewards.”

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One of Kitty Bartholomew’s favorite projects is her “belt chair,” with a woven seat made of old belts. It requires no sewing, stapling or gluing, and is a quick project.

She suggests first measuring the length and width of the seat all the way around with a tape measure to determine what size belts to use. Find belts at a thrift store in different widths, textures and colors, or make it more uniform by sticking with one color. A similar effect can be achieved using men’s ties, but since the fabric will stretch when sat upon, you might want to keep the original seat underneath.

1. Take the existing seat off the chair, keeping the chair frame. Loop belts around one way, securing them underneath by buckling them tightly.

2. Going the opposite direction, weave more belts in and out to create a basket-weave effect, and secure them underneath, as in Step 1.

3. Continue to weave belts until the entire seat of the chair is covered.