Fire Island Notebook: Painted Floor Dilemma

Citizens of Humanity LA Pop Up shot by Peggy Wong

Apologies for the radio silence. Busy few months, with good stuff to unveil soon. But in some ways I am right back where I left off, trying to finish our little house on Fire Island, yes a year and a half later, post-Sandy. Though most is complete, we just ran out of steam at the end of last summer and said basta to any more decisions, and closed the door and took off for Italy for 2 weeks for a much needed restoration of our own.

Our last lingering design decision is what color to paint the kitchen floor; white, grey or black? Then this week's visit to Montauk's Surf Lodge got me thinking about turquoise again....

These are some of my favorites, starting with the ever so chic Citizens of Humanity LA pop-up  designed by Rene Holguin of RTH Shop in collaboration with Amy Williams, CoH president,  and shot by Peggy Wong, ( more about that dream team  here.) 

Surf Lodge, Montauk

Surf Lodge, Montauk

or  all white...

MARCH SF

lovenordic blog 

Tricia Foley At Home in the Country

Emma's blogg

or shiny black....

NYC LOFT via Automatism

NYC LOFT via Automatism

or glossy grey...

via La maison dannag 

Naja Munthe's Copenhagen flat on Coco Cozy

We were originally going for raw, stained slightly grey and distressed:

via Greige Design blog

Andrew Corrie's by Ditte Isager

A hundred years ago, back when our house was built, they used whatever materials they could get their hands on, and it turns out that one side of our kitchen floor is oak and the other half, hard pine. No amount of  sanding, bleaching, staining, will give us a consistent color as we now have a grey color blocked floor. 

The whole house is so simple and white, perhaps I should follow my friend Mary Morant's advice and go for oversized painted diamonds...  

                                                                 What do you think? 

Fire Island Notebook: At the Water's Edge

Published just in time for the summer holidays,  At the Water's Edge is the name of the new book written/styled by Sally Hayden, photographed by Earl Carter, & published by Ryland Peters & Small.

Saltaire Harbour @ The Great South Bay

The book is both inspirational and informative. The first section focuses on all the design elements that go into creating an easy and relaxed seaside home from design considerations, materials, color palettes, to displaying collections. The second section features 12 real-life homes from the coasts of New England and Long Island to the shores of England, France and Scandinavia. We were flattered to have our tiny little Fire Island house included in such inspiring company. Here are a few out-takes of our pre-Sandy home from the book. Stay tuned for shots on the progress of our re-construction progress.

no cars or roads. houses are up on posts and all travel on wooden walks. 

afternoon light streams through our front door

vintage tortoise shells from Harbour Island

no A/C here! best mosquito deterrent too

vintage oyster plates - a lovely gift from my mother-in law

always ready for cocktail hour

We had such a great time getting to know Sally and Earl. It's always a bit funny to open your house to strangers and say "have your way with it," but we trusted them completely. They had a jam-packed itinerary of Shelter Island, Quogue, Montauk and Nantucket with only two days to travel, set up and shoot our house and the Saltaire area. To make things as easy as possible (and calm my nerves) I enlisted the aid of a good friend and uber-talented stylist in advance, Barclay Resler. Barclay has a magical touch (and wicked sense of humor) that can quickly make the simplest setting look chic. 

Sally is an interiors and food stylist with an interior design background. A former lifestyle director at Eve, she has also worked on many illustrious titles including Vogue Living /Australia and Vogue Entertaining and co-authored the best selling Coastal Living. She just recently moved from London to Australia. Earl is based in Australia and travels the world photographing people, architecture, hotels and interiors for many impressive clients, too many to list. I encourage you to visit his beautiful website here. They are both super nice and great company, I'm just sorry they live so far away.

 If you happen to be in Saltaire this weekend, the ever so talented stylist, Mary-Ellen Weinrib is hosting a tag sale full of her beautiful vintage props, plates and textiles. The book will be for sale there with a portion of the proceeds going to Save the Great South Bay and I'll also be selling a few vintage goodies and treasures from my recent trip to India. 

Have a happy 4th!  Hope to see you at the sale + the beach!  

Saltaire beach

Sandy Tag Sale

Saturday, July 6th

11:00 - 2:00 pm

109 Pacific Walk, Saltaire

cash + carry

All images are photographed by Earl Carter.  © Ryland Peters & Small /  Earl Carter.

Special thanks to the helpful crew at RPS: Jess, Wendy & Melty! 

Summer Whites II : In the white room...

We are in the final stages of our Fire Island remodel, the painting, and of course every surface is painted my favorite color, white. Picking the right shade of white is a nuanced task. When you use it on multiple surfaces, subtle hues are exponentially exaggerated. One also has to consider the influences of the light cast at different times of day and from different directions. I've been staring at so many shades of whites that I am still fixated with completely white rooms at the moment. 

Here are a few of my favorite bits of inspiration:

noshapenoshade-tumblr

Tricia Foley

Mark D Sikes pinterest

Flint & Kent pinterest

Tricia Foley

Darryl Carter

Tricia Foley

Dinasen- Anouska Hempel inspired room

John Pawson - Schrager Apt

We are using our favorite white, Fine Paints of Europe White 0001."It's the purest white, with white pigment only - 100% titanium dioxide. Not toned in any direction. It's an artist's white, a finer white, with more luminosity. When you see it, you go, Wow! It's as if you have never really seen white before." -Emmet Fiore - Senior Staff Colorist

We chose Eurolux Gloss for most surfaces and the ECO Brilliant for the kitchen cabinets. While pricier than most paints, they have low VOC's, dramatic durability and the depth is quite beautiful. Fine Paints of Europe are a member of the U.S. Green Building Council. All Eurolux and ECO paints and primers meet requirements for compliance with LEED EQ credit 4.2: Low-emitting materials. The ECO brilliant system (paint + primer) is expected to last 15 - 20 years. Our last paint job ( Eurolux) still looked new after 10 years and would have lasted longer if Sandy hadn't hit. So do the math, I think the price is justified over it's long life and it is the largest part of the home after all. 

It's hard to describe the house when the light pours in virtually bouncing around the room, reflecting off the walls and ceiling; it's especially dramatic at the end of the day, when the warmest beams come streaming through the west facing porch windows. Just in time for cocktail hour!

Fine Paints of Europe are available directly from their website or through a number of knowledgable dealers. They are  pleased to offer the skills of Emmett Fiore, Sr. staff colorist. Emmett provides complimentary professional color advice and technical support to clients through out the States. 

A special thank you to Ron Nicholas of  Gleason Paint Place  in Woodside  for all his  advice and support as well as to VanKemenade Paints in Sayville for a last minute emergency delivery to the ferry boats this weekend...those new walls soaked up a lot more than we counted on! 

Additional stories about FPE found here at Apartment Therapy, The Story of Fine Paints, Painting 101 with Vance Freed , Keeping Track of Paint Colors Tip

Fire Island Notebook: Rose Garden Inspiration

Constance Spry

I am fixated with Old Roses and particularly David Austin's English Roses.  Over the years, I have planted quite a few on the south side of our Fire Island house. Once you start learning about the rich history of roses, botanical and otherwise it can become quite addictive. We lost quite a few in Sandy, some that were well established with over 20 + years growth. So tabula rasa!(or Rosa) Here is my inspiration and wish list, as well as a brief resource guide for re-building our garden.

The good news is that it is peak rose season and one of the largest, and oldest rose gardens in America is right here in NYC at the Cranford Rose Garden in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Many of the roses that were planted in 1927 are still there and the garden boasts tens of thousands of blooms. If the rain holds up, this is the week to visit.

Constance Spry

Abraham Darby

Gertrude Jekyll

Rosa Mundi

Sir Paul Smith - a modern climber

Sombreuil Climber

Glamis Castle

Why roses? My parents were avid gardeners, and my father maintained his rose garden with meticulous care, spraying and pruning weekly. But his garden leaned more to the fragile, formal side and required too much attention for my taste. I became hooked when I first visited Siasconset, Nantucket and saw the sweet, little fisherman cottages covered with trellises and exploding, rambling roses.

S'conset Rose Covered cottage

David Austin is a brilliant rose breeder based in Shropshire, England, with a shipping warehouse in the States.  His roses have all the lovely forms and fragrances of old roses. Over the years he has bred his roses with an emphasis on heady fragrances, disease resistance and repeat blooming.  The truth is that if you choose well, roses are quite hardy and just require a little pruning and basic fertilizing, preferably organic. While the season just ended for most mail order roses, many of these are still available at your local nursery, though not at any of the big boxes. It's not to early to start planning ahead for the fall planting season, reserve now so they don't sell out of your favorite.

 Here are my favorite rose resources, which also serve as great sources of inspiration and reference guides. If you read just one book about the history roses, read In Search of Lost Roses by Thomas Christopher. Though read with caution, you might just catch the rose addiction.

Mail Order Sources:

David Austin Roses
The Antique Rose Emporium
Wayside Garden
White Flower Farm

Inspiration + Reference:

Brooklyn Botanic Garden / The Cranford Rose Garden
Martha Stewart
New York Botanical Garden / Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden
RHS Chelsea Flower Show
Royal Horticultural Society

Favorite Books:

Anatomy of a Rose, Sharman Apt Russell, 2001, Perseus Publishing
In Search of Lost Roses, Thomas Christopher, 1989, Summit Books
Nantucket Gardens & Houses, Taylor Lewis, 1990, Little, Brown & Company
Roses for English Gardens, Gertrude Jekyll, 1902 /1982 reissue by Baron Publishing
Two Gardeners, A Friendship in Letters, Katharine White & Elizabeth Lawrence, 2002, Beacon Press


Note: Full details for each rose are included their links above.

Special request: The Paul Smith Rose isn't available in this country yet, so if anyone is visiting his Westbourne Grove House this month, please snip off a rose on the pillar there and toss it in a baggy for me.  A little rose "rustling" will be greatly appreciated. Rose rustling etiquette guide here.

Fire Island Notebook: Before + After Sandy

Here are some comparative shots, before and after the flood, just to give you a sense of the scale of our project.

photo by William Waldron
stylist Kim Ficaro

The after shots were taken about 6 weeks after Sandy hit. Access to the island was was initially closed off while the Village crews, fire department, and teams of electricians went through out the village, house to house, assessing damage and cleaning up any dangerous debris of downed power lines and floating propane tanks. 

We started cleaning the house ourselves, but given the scale and distance from home, we threw in the towel (literally) and hired a cleaning swat team to clear up mold and toxic residue from the flood. Tara's Personal Cleaning Service, a brilliant green company that only uses non-toxic, natural materials, did an incredibly thorough job. My extended family came out and helped us pack up the whole house, and I can't imagine how we would have been able to do it without their help. They were fantastic. We stored any salvageable furniture and personal belongings in a 20' shipping container that was shipped across the bay by our contractor and positioned down the block. Next came the demo crews to pull out any mold damaged walls which revealed that some walls had to be completely removed and reframed. Flood damage is a challenge enough in itself, think about the complications involved when it's on a small barrier island .

view from kitchen into living room

photo by William Waldron
stylist Kim Ficaro

kitchen and back door

photo by William Waldron
stylist Kim Ficaro

bathroom skeleton

The before pictures are from a photo shoot that Country Living did a couple years ago. 

How fortunate to work with their lovely crew and the amazing William Waldron. The ever-so talented Kim Ficaro styled all the shots. Check out their inspiring websites. 

photo by William Waldron
stylist Kim Ficaro

I love this photo of our front porch. It reminds me of all the great times we've had in that house, birthday parties, dinners with neighbors, the lazy Sunday afternoons, and it keeps me looking forward to many more happy times.