For a young family moving from a home in New York City where the excitement of an urban lifestyle and the countless entertainment opportunities were always available, we were challenged to create a home that would support a different but equally compelling lifestyle lived closer to the outdoors and supported by indoor spaces with the interest and character to inspire a variety of ways to engage.

The house our clients purchased was once a charming 1930s white clapboard colonial that had been expanded and altered in ways that may have been intended to make it grand but resulted in a ramble of like-sized rooms lacking in character. By contrast, our clients are a couple brimming with wit, charm, and warmth, so remaking the house in a way that would match their personalities became our goal, a goal made easier by being paired with the always inventive designer, David Netto, and the talented landscape architects Tim Paterson and later, Ahmad Sardar.

We started our interventions by reshaping the existing plan to reapportion space to prioritize family functions. An arched opening in an open-air connector was newly enclosed with floor-to-ceiling windows to form a sunny mudroom. To one of two undistinguished existing living rooms, we added bookcases to reshape the proportions and recast the space as a de facto library. The existing family room was made warmer and friendlier with the addition of raw pine paneling and a grid of rustic beams on the ceiling. And off the family room and kitchen, we added what some would consider a folly if it were a structure in the landscape — a flower room with a broad work surface under windows that look out on a charming vegetable garden and walls clad entirely in tile.

Soon after exchanging their urban lifestyle for one in the country, our clients confided in us that their worries about the move had quickly evaporated. “This house is so perfect and so full of fun that we never want to leave.”

Interior Designer: David Netto