For two years, Tara Mangini and Percy Bright, the design duo behind Jersey Ice Cream Co., were living like the proverbial cobbler’s kids who had no shoes. The main living area of their upstate New York country home was furnished with power tools, piles of plaster mix, and stacks of salvaged tile, while just steps away, their “kitchen” consisted of a hot plate and a five-gallon bucket for a sink.
Living in a construction zone is standard practice for the designers who are known for moving into a client’s house for months at a time while renovating it before the owners return for the big reveal. So, it wasn’t unusual that when the couple bought their own rundown 1870 farmhouse, they trusted their process—to live in the house and let it intuitively guide their design decisions.
“Spending so much time here influences the design because you know what the house needs,” says Tara. “We really obsess over finishes, wood, tile, and the transitions—everything that’s attached to the house. That’s what we care about most. And the rest of it? Like the furniture? It’ll work itself out.”
This project, however, required a little more imagination, not to mention insulation, plumbing, and electricity. The main level was a warren of tiny rooms, some painted bright yellow and neon green. “It was broken and unloved,” Tara says.
Yet something drew them in and they could both see the potential. Having recently returned from a trip on a small island in Sweden, the couple knew the Swedish primitive design details they fell in love with would be right at home here.
Floorboard by floorboard, Tara and Percy painstakingly carved, smoothed, cut, sourced, and made just about everything here on site, from the newly plastered walls to the furniture. Some 40 sprawling acres of wildflowers and woodlands influenced the home’s earthy palette, and at every turn, rooms radiate natural light and warmth even in the coldest of winter months.
“Winters here are really long,” Tara laments of the dormant season. Then, noting the hand-stamped wildflowers that live year-round on the walls upstairs, she adds, “The whole house is designed around the hope of summer.”
Before: Dining Room
Courtesy of Jersey Ice Cream Co.
You Are Viewing: This Scandi Farmhouse Will Change The Way You Paint Your Walls
After: Scandi Accents
Kate S. Jordan
Kate S. JordanIn the dining area, the fabric shade of the Scandinavian modern light adds softness above the primitive farmhouse table and vintage pub chairs. An old Swedish painting hangs above the antique cabinet-turned-bar. “I buy a lot of paintings from Swedish [online] auctions,” says Tara. “There’s a quality about them that I’m drawn to—it’s more of a feeling or a mood.” Percy trimmed the windows in raw wood and made the simple curtain rods in keeping with the humble surroundings.
At one end of the dining room, the couple added built-in Shaker-style bookcases to flank the doorway. The vintage Danish chair mingles with other secondhand furniture pieces of various styles and eras united by natural wood tones.
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After: Organic Finishes
Kate S. Jordan
Kate S JordanThe reclaimed hemlock floorboards and newly exposed original wood beams and rafters warm up the living room, as do the gypsum plaster walls custom-tinted a putty color. (Tara and Percy are known for their plasterwork, which they prefer over drywall for the organic quality it lends to the surfaces.) The room’s curvy wood-framed chairs, recovered in mohair and boucle fabrics, complement the coffee table that Percy designed and made. A decorative screen from a Vermont antiques shop conceals the woodburning stove. Underfoot, a Scandinavian kilim rug subtly speaks to the other folk art motifs seen throughout the home.
In the living area, the couple also carved out a workspace and outfitted it with an antique Hans J. Wegner desk and duck decoy display they purchased at the Brimfield Antique Flea Market.
Get the Look:
Scandinavian Kilim Rug: Emma Mellor Handmade Rugs
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Before: Kitchen
Courtesy of Jersey Ice Cream Co.
You Are Viewing: This Scandi Farmhouse Will Change The Way You Paint Your Walls
After: Reclaimed Wood
In the kitchen, a long run of Taj Mahal quartzite tops cabinetry Percy made using reclaimed hemlock. A duck-egg blue enamel Lacanche range and skirted lower shelves break up the wood and step the space back to an earlier time. Tara and Percy spend much of their time together enjoying meals and playing cards at the kitchen table.
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After: Organic Materials
Kate S. Jordan
Kate S. JordanAround the sink area, a patchwork of materials are quilted together, including a large soapstone sink (found at a Vermont salvage shop), reclaimed cement tile, and new Shaker-style cabinetry that’s painted with rich salmon-colored tempera paint. The couple learned about tempera, made with earth pigments mixed with egg, linseed oil, and water, while working in Sweden. “It’s like painting with milk. It kind of has a lime-washed quality to it, so it’s a little uneven,” says Tara. “It’s very of-the-earth.” A wide, deep-silled window overlooks the gardens.
The room’s pine hutch was a $300 find on Facebook Marketplace.
Get the Look:
Cabinet Paint: Temperahuset
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After: Thoughtful Design
Kate S Jordan
Opposite the sink, the couple designed a floor-to-ceiling built-in pantry, while raw wood wainscoting and a peg rail line an adjoining wall. “The light is just so beautiful in here all day,” says Tara.
After: Salvaged Finds
A tiny downstairs powder room packs plenty of personality with stone tiled floors and a salvaged corner sink. The original door has wooden knobs, and the stone floors are from Chateau Domingue.
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Before: Guest Bedroom
Courtesy of Jersey Ice Cream Co.
You Are Viewing: This Scandi Farmhouse Will Change The Way You Paint Your Walls
After: Folk Art Motifs
For the guest rooms, the couple created a series of wall stamps using wood scraps and weather stripping to form goldenrods, asters, daisies, and foxgloves. Applied with tempera paint, the look is reminiscent of Swedish folk art patterns and appears as if the walls are covered in paper that has been sun-drenched and faded over time. Percy also designed and built the beds throughout the house.
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After: Golden Tones
Kate S. Jordan
Kate S. JordanThe farmhouse’s surrounding fields of goldenrod and white aster inspired the palette of the guest bath tub’s checkerboard tile surround. The room’s ochre-hued vanity, another Facebook Marketplace find, is complemented with new putty-colored beadboard.
Get the Look:
Wall Tile: Zia Tile
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After: Tucked-In Nook
The couple added a wall of shelves to hold their ever-growing book collection along an upstairs landing that leads to the attic, which now is a studio space for Percy. New beadboard walls and details like the rounded baseboard at the first stairstep hint at age that belies the recent construction.
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After: Hand-Stamped Details
Instead of floral wallpaper, which Tara had originally considered, the couple also decided to hand-stamp tempera paint onto the plastered walls in the primary bedroom. They used a laser level to guide the gridded pattern on the walls. “We were so overwhelmed at first, trying not to overthink the angles. But the house is already uneven,” Tara says. “It was exciting to do something new.”
The room is otherwise simply furnished with the focal point being the bed, which Percy made with Douglas fir, and a Swedish rug Tara found on an auction site. “I’m always scouring online auctions and flea markets, buying things I love but don’t necessarily need at the moment,” Tara says.
After: Retrofitted Beauty
Kate S. Jordan
Kate S. JordanPercy retrofitted a piece of furniture they bought at Brimfield as the vanity in the couple’s main bathroom. They topped it with reclaimed marble tiles they had bought at an auction years ago. Tara says she was unsure of the exact tile color because it had a texture on it, but after they sanded it down, they fell in love with the grey veining. “Perfectly imperfect,” she says.
Woodburning Sauna
While the word “sauna” has Finnish roots, the ritual is very much a part of Swedish culture. With its woodburning stove and cedar plank benches, the property’s new sauna makes the long winters more bearable. The couple built the structure into the side of a hill where a crumbling rock wall hinted of a previous structure. A combination of raw materials—stacked stone walls, a bluestone floor, and reclaimed cedar siding—play into its primitive look. “We really let the materials inform the design,” says Percy.
Greenhouse Gardening
Kate S. Jordan
Kate S. JordanA new fenced-in vegetable, herb, and flower garden sits within the meadow of wildflowers. The couple built the new steepled greenhouse and potting shed with leftover stone from the mudroom. Its polycarbonate walls and roof insulate and diffuse light more effectively than glass. “We wanted the greenhouse to extend the small growing season we have,” says Tara.
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Character-Filled Workshop
The couple also added on to the existing board-and-batten barn that now doubles as Percy’s woodshop (warmed with another woodburning stove) and provides room for extra storage and a home gym.
Kelly Ryan Kegans is a Minneapolis-based writer, editor, and photo stylist with more than 25 years of experience producing home design content for brands including Country Living, Better Homes & Gardens, and HGTV Magazine. Her own home is populated with more books than shelves, a few too many scrubbed pine tables, and moody photos of gray day landscapes, which are her happy place.
Source: https://farmhouse.numerologybox.com
Category: Chưa phân loại
