8:30 a.m. Gary White, president and owner of Kitchen & Bath Design in Newport Beach, Calif., orders an Egg-beater huevos rancheros with black beans and a glass of orange juice. A serious inline skater, he watches his diet to stay fit.

9:30 a.m. White pulls into the parking lot of Kitchen & Bath Design, located in a strip mall at a busy intersection. The showroom opens to the public at 10 a.m. But his employees-two designers and an office manager-get in around 9. The showroom houses six kitchen vignettes and two bathrooms. White designed his favorite display in warm cherry tones, but the highlight is a string of tiny white lights that runs through an uneven cleft in the backsplash, imitating the look of an active fault line. White offers his services-kitchen and bath design, layout, and product sales-to both consumers and contractors. Like many kitchen and bath dealers, he relies on a core group of contractors for a steady stream of business. The consumer work comes from walk-by or drive-by traffic and word of mouth. For White to take on a job, he must be involved in the design and purchase of everything in the room on a cost-plus basis-on top of an hourly rate. That not only helps him make money on small jobs, it allows him to work on projects that don't involve cabinetry. He doesn't want to be thought of as a "bow-tied cabinet salesman."

9:40 a.m. Lillian Garnier of the Lotus Institute-a feng shui expert - rings the doorbell. White leads her through the showroom to his desk. He's just started consulting with her on projects and he bills the client for her time. Today they're discussing a light-commercial remodeling project in Westwood, Calif., a dry cleaner and tailor. The owner called White after he drove by the show- room one night and saw the fault-line display. He liked what he saw. So White will design his project around a natural disaster theme-a motif not suited to the feint of heart in Southern California. A fault line in the floor-3 feet deep and 2 feet wide-will run the length of the store. Underneath the clear plexiglass cover, faux rock and glass beads will glisten and glow like molten lava. Fiber optic strip lighting in the ceiling and along the walls will highlight other cracks and crevices. Garnier's advice helps White balance the different elements in the space. Each element-water, wood, fire, earth, metal-should be represented with no one element dominating. So far, the design has a lot of fire, so it needs to be cooled down with earth tones. Garnier thinks painting the walls yellow will do the trick. This project is important to White. He wants to move into more light commercial design-retail and restaurants. "Orange County is painfully traditional," he says of his typical residential clients.

11:20 a.m. A rep from a lighting showroom in Santa Monica stops by. She doesn't have an appointment, but White takes a few minutes to talk with her. He's big into lighting. In fact, he thinks his lighting design is what separates his work from that of his competitors. But he doesn't have the buying power he'd like. His showroom isn't big enough to stock or display decorative lighting. So he's looking for a place to send his clients to pick out their lighting fixtures - a place where he'd get some price breaks.

11:30 a.m. White hops in his maroon Corvette and starts the drive inland toward Morada, where he's designed the kitchen for a spec remodel. The drive takes about 45 minutes, not an unusually long trip for him given the sprawling Orange County market.

12:15 p.m. White arrives at the run-down Gothic- looking home {he and his staff have dubbed it the Munster house). A developer bought the abandoned house-which sits in the hills above Los Angeles. So far, the inside has been gutted and the shell of a new wing added on. The developer asked White to step in and rework the kitchen when he noticed serious flaws in the original design. The flow was all-wrong. The peninsula jutted out into the main hallway. And a long, narrow corridor to a bathroom wasted valuable kitchen space. The developer was impressed with White's revamped kitchen-enough to ask him to design four bathrooms in the house. That's what brings White out today. He's measuring for cabinetry and fixtures.

2:25 p.m. The drive back means a late lunch. White picks one of his favorite spots, Bistro 201. Despite the laid-back atmosphere, lunch is not leisurely today. He has a 3:30 meeting at the office.

3:40 p.m. White's DuPont Corian distributor, Carol Lamkins of Rugby Building Products, is waiting for him. She's brought two DuPont Corian reps-Patrick Owens and Dean Murray to meet him. White has a long, close history with Corian. In 1991 he worked with the company on a program to raise awareness of bathroom safety. And he specs the material on one or two jobs per month. He especially likes its design flexibility, which allows him to create nonstandard angles and patterns and combine finishes for a custom look.

4:20 p.m. Ute Ach, one of White's project managers, needs advice. She's designing a powder room where a cracked-glass countertop and integral sink make a bridge between two base cabinets. When finished, the cracked glass will refract light from under the counter and bounce it on to the walls. But she's having trouble figuring out where to put the lighting fixtures and how to change the bulbs. White's solution is to add a board between the cabinets and the counters that is just wide enough for the lighting fixture. When the bulb burns out, the top drawer can be removed and the fixture reached by hand.

5:10 p.m. In the showroom bathroom, White changes into his Team Paradise shirt and black lycra shorts. An avid skater for 40 years, he's been inline skate racing for the past 10.

5:15 p.m. With skates in tow, White gets into his car to drive to the beach. He parks at City Hall. The mayor of Newport Beach goes home at 5, conveniently leaving the space open for White.

5:40 p.m. He takes off down the paved path along the beach. Today he'll go about 18 miles with a group of other skaters-some professional, some in it for fun - which he skates with every Wednesday. White is the long distance racer on Team Paradise, so he tries to skate 180 miles a week. "When I'm out there skating, it's like there are wings on my feet," he says. "I have no worries." - Christine Fishburn. Associate Editor