Kitchen NV is the design studio Nick Vanderhovel opened in Pinckney in 2020, after years of designing kitchens for homeowners around Brighton. He wanted a practice where the designer who first sits at your table is the same person checking cabinet reveals on install day, and where a client is a name rather than a ticket number.
Today Kitchen NV, LLC designs kitchens, baths and other rooms for homeowners across Livingston and Washtenaw counties, orders and manages the cabinetry, and coordinates trusted partner contractors to build the work.
Where the Kitchen NV name comes from
NV are Nick's initials. Read them aloud and they sound like "envy," which became the studio's tagline: Create Kitchen Envy. The name is a little playful on purpose. The work behind it is not — every kitchen starts with measurements, a conversation about how the household actually lives, and drawings detailed enough for an installer to build from without guessing.
Nick's background in kitchen design
Before founding Kitchen NV, Nick designed kitchens in the Brighton area, and some of today's clients first worked with him there. Cabinetry has always been the center of his work: box sizes, door styles, interior storage and the way a run of cabinets meets a window or a ceiling. That focus once extended to a furniture-grade cabinetry line Kitchen NV offered under its own name.
His design services reach past the kitchen into master baths, powder rooms, laundry and mudrooms, closets, basements with second kitchens, wine storage and home bars, offices and built-ins. He also prepares drawings for homeowners installing their own cabinets and for builders working on new construction.
Credentials and a builder license you can check
- CMKBD — Certified Master Kitchen & Bath Designer, the National Kitchen & Bath Association's highest design certification. Our post on what a Certified Master Kitchen & Bath Designer is explains the path.
- CAPS — Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist, from the National Association of Home Builders.
- CLIPP — Certified Living in Place Professional, from the Living in Place Institute. Both inform our aging-in-place remodeling work.
- Michigan Residential Builder license #2101209269 — an individual license held by Nick, first issued in 2015 and current through May 31, 2029.
To confirm the license yourself, open the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) license search, enter 2101209269 or the name Nicholas Vanderhovel, and look for "Residential Builder Individual" with an active status. It takes about a minute, and it is worth doing for anyone you consider hiring.
Press: a KBB cover, a True Residential feature and This Old House
In October 2020, the first year of the studio, a Kitchen NV kitchen built around a backlit granite island was the cover of Kitchen & Bath Business (KBB), with a four-page spread inside. That project lives on our luxury kitchen remodel page.
True Residential, the appliance maker, featured a rustic log-home kitchen Nick designed, a style we cover on the farmhouse and rustic kitchen page. Nick was also quoted in a This Old House article on hiring a kitchen designer; our own version of that advice is in read this before hiring a kitchen designer.
How a boutique studio works with partner contractors
Kitchen NV is boutique, not big box. We keep the client list short so Nick can stay hands-on, and we do not run construction crews of our own. Demolition, carpentry, plumbing, electrical, tile and stone are handled by trusted partner contractors Nick has worked alongside, and he stays involved through installation so the finished room matches the drawings. If you already have a builder, we work with yours.
The studio sits on Kress Road in Hamburg Township with a Pinckney mailing address. Most projects are in Livingston and Washtenaw counties — Pinckney, Hamburg, Putnam, Brighton, Dexter and the townships around them — with others in western Oakland and Wayne counties. The full list is on our service areas page, and our kitchen remodeling overview explains how a project runs from first call to final walkthrough.
