Before & After: My Amagansett Refresh

Live Beautiful will be released in just two days! I have worked on this book for the greater part of two and a half years and could not be more excited and proud of this journey I embarked on with Nicole Franzen! We shot my own Amagansett beach home for the book in summer of 2018 but since then, in these past few month’s I have given it a refresh and Architectural Digest featured the material and tonality-driven transformation. Franzen shot both the before and the after and many of the angles captured are the same. I wanted to let these images speak for themselves and document for you how paint, furniture, and décor, and updated materials can completely update a space. The architecture remained intact, nothing changed structurally, however, I do feel like I am living in a brand new home. Gosh, I love design!

When I initially designed this space in 2009 there was an uptick in the reclaimed wood craze as well as industrial antiques and obscure oddities which were bursting onto the design scene. I reveled in the hunt at local flea markets, antique fairs, and Brimfield at every opportunity. 10 years later I felt I needed to lighten and brighten the space in both palette, materials, and energetically. I didn’t want to wipe the slate clean and strip the home of its original identity, just institute a few small tweaks that would make a large impact visually, but not a large dent in my budget.

Whenever I can I buy vintage. Not only because I love the time-worn patina and rich unknown history it adds to the home, but I also love the sustainability of repurposing something old. Here, I incorporated a 1970’s Angelo Mangiarotti travertine coffee table to my living room and a 1960s bamboo armchair by Giovanni Travasa. Crisp white walls were replaced with a warmer hue plaster by Kamp Studios contributing to the textural contrast. Benjamin Moore Fossil paint was used.

Shop my Amagansett bookshelf cubbies here.

It is true that too much of one thing is never a good idea. The roughhewn look on top of salvaged industrial items on top of rustic findings, on top of an aged patina, began to feel like too much. I did not follow two cardinal rules of design—less is more and contrast and juxtaposition are far more interesting than anything one-note.

The reclaimed wood and dark lava stone in the kitchen were ready for a departure so I offered some levity to the space by introducing new, lighter materials. My husband and I demo’d the kitchen ourselves and installed Semihandmade which is the greatest invention if you want a refined, custom look within a restrained budget. Our original kitchen was IKEA so the foundation was already there. Semihandmade makes new door and drawer fronts for Ikea cabinets in a variety of designs, I chose the shaker style. What’s more epic is their DIY option which means you receive unfinished doors making it that much more cost-effective and customizable. To say I am obsessively obsessed with Semihandmade would be an understatement—I could not have completed this refresh without them! After receiving the fronts, they were painted in the Farrow and Ball Colour by Nature collection in Ash Grey—which is the perfect shade of soft green that matched the veining in my marble called Calcutta Monet from ABC Stone and fabricated by C & B Marble. And finally, I called upon long term collaborators Kamp Studios to masterfully clad the island in custom fluted plaster in the same hue.

Shop my Amagansett Kitchen Here.