Design Update: Castine, Maine Lake House

“Hi! Would you have time to chat sometime this week? We recently bought a vacation home in Maine and would love to explore some updates and redesign. Thanks!”

15 months after completing their Brooklyn, NY apartment, two of my very favorite clients reached back out with a very special project in mind - a lake house they just purchased in Castine, Maine! This isn’t the first time I’ve worked on a second home with a client and I am incredibly humbled for the opportunity to continue good work with people I thoroughly enjoy!

When I first saw this place I was all in.
(every photo in this post was taken by the clients - they are truly amazing!)

I love two things about this:
1) The gorgeous structure and architecture of this home, and
2) How terrible it looked when we began

This job is a classic example of the perfect cosmetic update. It wasn’t hard at all to imagine what this home could be!

Pretty amazing, right? Since this home will be used as a vacation place, the clients do plan to rent it out when they’re not there. This dictated much of the design and selections for the home - durable, family friendly elements were a must, and using some of the homes existing pieces where possible helped stretch the budget.

We still have a little ways to go, but I thought it would be fun to share how far this home has come since September! Items left to do include painting the window frames black and updating the dining room and kitchen lighting. There is also a guest room/office that we’ve been chipping away on and that will be included in the final reveal in a few months!

Come on in, friends!

Repositioning the existing sectional and adding a pair of forest green armchairs gives the living room an intimate, cozy feel in this cavernous space. The clients really wanted the sofa to face the windows, so I believe we turned it a whole 180 from where it had been. We’ll be adding an old, rustic bench along the back side, which conveniently leads right outside to the screened porch.

When I was told this home would be rented out, I really wanted to add some special touches unique to Castine. A pair of framed maps helps visitors identify where they are in this very special, undisturbed part of Maine.

Reusing the existing coffee table and media console were easy options - they work well in here as functional pieces that don’t stick out. The style direction we were after was a modern rustic/farmhouse vibe - primitive, functional pieces, nothing too modern or fancy.

Browsing for textiles in this home has been the MOST fun. All pillows and rugs came together just beautifully. I haven’t updated the throw blankets yet but I think a couple fresh selections will pull this all in just right! Isn’t the light in here so lovely?

I absolutely can’t wait to see the new lights installed over the dining table and island. I think you’ll really like what I found! Little different, but everything about this design has been a fun opportunity to step outside the box.

The kitchen required the most effort from the clients - I picked out a few paints for them to sample, they sent some pics, we finalized, and then they got to work! They painted all the cabinets Light French Gray by SW, and the island Newburg Green by BM. But one of my favorite updates in here was removing the previous yellow-y shelving unit and replacing it with natural wood shelves on simple iron powder coated brackets. Done and done! I can’t wait to see what the kitchen will look like when the window frames are all painted black. Cannot. Wait.

This past year has been deeply hard in so many ways and I can honestly say this project came at just the right time. I needed this level of creativity, I needed a project that would rejuvenate my soul and allow me opportunity to see some fruit from my efforts. Every time I sat down to work on this place I felt my mind enjoying the escape. While I’ve not stepped foot in this house, I’ve loved every second of working on it and studying its every corner, nook and cranny. More to come soon when it’s ready for it’s big final reveal!

Thank you so much for coming by, friends. Stay warm and stay safe out there!

Design Reveal: Sweet Dreams, Brooklyn

It’s weird times, indeed. I know every single one of you has had to adjust your regular way of life in some way, shape or form. If you have been fortunate enough to still have your job, there’s a good chance that looks a lot different now than it did 6 months ago - So many companies are figuring out how to continue their operations remotely and out of office. While I have always done my design work remotely, there is one aspect I’ve thoroughly enjoyed doing in person - finishing photos! I’ve shared before that I only get to take photos of about 15% of my completed projects, so when the opportunity arises to take pictures it feels like Christmas morning!

About a year ago one such project was wrapping up just beautifully in Brooklyn, NY, and I was hoping to make it up to take pictures along with another project in the Chelsea neighborhood. As it happens, COVID struck before I made it up there and I was sorely missing this project in my portfolio (and getting to share it here with you)! So I reached out to the client who I’ve been in touch with by the natural evolution of friendship in the process, and she was totally open to taking the pictures for me! We even scheduled a virtual styling session, which looked a lot like this for an hour:

Despite my face it really was a lot of fun! Hah! Having someone else take pictures was such a good practice in letting go of something I normally like to have control over, and boy am I glad I let go. She absolutely knocked it out of the park! I sent her the same photography tips outlined in our Interior Design Starter Guide, and she nailed it.

Before I show you around let’s take a look back at what this room started as. Now, I have nothing against lime green walls. In fact, our design assistant, Joy, absolutely rocked this StyleMutt Home project with lime green walls. But when this client and I were discussing her ultimate vision for this space, her bedroom, the lime green walls just didn’t support the end-goal.

The plan, shown below, was to create a really soft and soothing space using various neutral textures and patterns, contrasted by just a few grounding elements. We wanted to create a sophisticated retreat that represented the client’s fun and joyful personality.

And here is our plan brought to life! ALL pictures are in huge thanks to this sweet client. Her pup, Peggy, seized the opportunity, for sure!

Another look back at the beginning:

One of my favorite aspects of this project was getting to source from some small businesses I’d had my eye on for a little while. The sconces and overhead fixture by Cedar and Moss really make this room feel special. They were an opportunity to use something a little different from the mainstream. All by themselves these lights fold in that sophisticated vibe we were looking for, but they’re still unique and fun.

Hey, over here, Peggy!

This is such an awesome example of how to make a neutral palette visually interesting. Breaking up a monochromatic palette with varying textures and patterns and elements brings a room to life.

And then adding in a few contrasting elements in deeper, saturated tones grounds the space, and actually helps in making the whole room feel lighter and airier!

The beginning again,

and now.

One more time:

It was important to remember while working on this space that the same person I was designing this room for was the same person that, at one time, liked the lime green - you know that person has a bold aesthetic that doesn’t feel the need to fit in any one style box. While we wiped the green clean, we replaced it with a fun graphic paper that nods to the vibrant personality of the client.

A single statement pillow by my talented friend, Abbie at a. Naber Design pulls together the blues from the nightstands and the rug.

With bedrooms I like to make the bed and bed wall the focal point of the room. Since this client said she didn’t have any use for a dresser, we decided on a chic low lounge chair nestled near the natural light, and called it a day.

That’s a wrap, folks! This is one of my all time favorite bedrooms I’ve had the opportunity to design, and getting to share it with you is all because of the great effort of my client. Sarah, thank you. You are amazing and this was such a treat to work on with you.

Thank you all so much for stopping by today!

'Shire Green', SW

Hello, sweet friends! Well we are just barreling through the seasons here, aren’t we? Aspects of this new weird normal feel like a marathon, but I’m also getting seasonal amnesia - you know how sometimes when you’re driving and you end up back home but hardly remember how you got there? (this IS normal, ask around) That’s how the seasons are kind of feeling. The pandemic started when the weather was still cool in March, then we blew through Summer and are rounding the corner to Fall and the air is turning crisp. How’d we get here? I, for one, don’t intend to barrel through the Fall. I quite enjoy this season and we intend to take full advantage of all of its sweet gifts.

Since March work has increased, schools have closed, I released my Interior Design Starter Guide, and we finally started letting Albus upstairs to our bedroom level. Those are the highlights in a nutshell! In all seriousness, what has been hard about this season has also been met with all that is rich and precious about it at the same time. Life has been busy on an other worldly level, but at the same time there is nothing like being with my family to fill my cup. Gratitude has not escaped me and I know that is a direct gift from the Lord.

Towards the end of Summer Matt and I suddenly realized we had no established work spaces for our kids to do virtual school from this year. We thrust ourselves into creating functional desk areas in their rooms in time before the first day of school (yesterday!), and I’m relieved to share we got it done! It was a stretch, but done. Re-working Shire’s room to even make space for a desk was a challenge. But for me challenge and opportunity are synonymous and we really had a ton of fun! Since we were going to be moving things around I asked Shire if she wanted a fresh color which was an instant and surprising “YES!”

She’s loved her pink for several years, but she shares my curiosity and joy in creativity and wanted to try out green. After many swatches and samples, she ended up mixing two colors from Sherwin Williams and got to name it!

‘Shire Green’ is soft and minty with just a slight touch of gray. It’s perfectly dreamy; and so fun that our girl got to create it!

We went 3/4 the way up the wall, just like we did with the pink, but added vertical trim for some cozy texture and needed visual interest for such a light color. Before we added the trim it kind of just blended with the white, so I love that the trim work establishes the two colors.

Her bedding and curtains didn’t change, but it’s fun to see how the new color plays off both. Everything else in the room is new, new to us, built or on loan!

The light is a sweet borrow from Cate who used the pair in her master bedroom a few years ago and I love that it can bend out of the way when not in use!

Since Shire specifically requested her bed be placed in this nook (we were originally going to put the desk in the nook), we needed a slim nightstand solution, which Matt created out of scrap wood in our garage.

The desk is a piece we found at Target (linked here), and the chair I created from two Facebook Marketplace pieces I found, and the shelves….oh, those shelves. I really wanted corner shelves here so she could get as much up on shelves as possible, but it turns out the studs on this wall are every 24”, which didn’t work for your standard brackets. We found these horizontal brackets online (linked here), and while they ended up being the only possible way we could hang shelves where we wanted them, they felt like a visual eye-sore. Very garage-y looking. But honestly, as soon as I got her stuff up on them they grew on me!

That gorgeous mirror we’ll call a temporary trade - we loaned all our weight lifting equipment to my brother and Cate as soon as the gyms closed, and we got their mirror for when my sister was staying with us earlier in the pandemic. Weights for a mirror - not a bad deal! The dresser I am going to hold off on sharing because Shire and I have plans in place for the piece. She and I had searched all Summer for a refinishing project we could tackle together, and that cutie showed up just last week on FB Marketplace for a steal. It’s the perfect shape for our inspiration, (see here - of course, the project will be entirely dependent on our skills, so who knows where we’ll end up!)

Have you been cornered into updating any parts of your home during this time of COVID? Or simply taken on any refreshes in the name of creativity? Drop your project(s) in a comment below! Would love to hear what you all have been up to?

Thank you so much for stopping by!