Kitchen Remodels Issue 17 — Spring Refresh

A Fashion Buyer’s Danish-Inspired Getaway on Shelter Island, Before and After

Annie Quigley April 26, 2019

When London-born fashion buyer (and Remodelista reader) Lisa Jones emailed us with before and after photographs of her recent home renovation, we instantly wanted to swap sources. Where did she get the incredible daybed in the master bedroom and the simple white mat in the bathroom?

Here’s the story. When Jones and her husband, James Hyatt, stumbled upon a dated, dark, wood-paneled bungalow on New York’s remote Shelter Island, she saw the perfect opportunity to dive into her obsession with design—and create the ideal vacation home. “It wasn’t necessarily love at first sight,” she says, “but we saw the potential and loved the abnormal angles and the undeniable beauty of the position on the lake. This was a great opportunity at an affordable price.” Over the course of a year, she ditched the dark wood paneling, updated the floors, and knocked down interior walls. The result? A bright, lakefront home that’s a perfect backdrop for a fashion (and design) buyer’s carefully sourced trove—bargains included.

Here’s a look inside.

Photography by Jonathan Hokklo.

jones didn&#8\2\17;t originally plan on a full house remodel, but after liv 17 — Above: Jones didn’t originally plan on a full-house remodel, but after living in the house as it was for a winter and replacing a leaky roof, she was ready to dig in. “Nothing had been done to the house since the ’70s and there were some very dated design decisions,” she says.

Consulting (via Skype) with Swedish architect Niklas Thormark, Jones’s team refinished floors, knocked down walls, and painted the walls, trim, and ceilings with Benjamin Moore Decorator’s White. In the main room, Jones says, “we loved the sunken living room but hated the railing that divided the rooms,” so they removed it, along with the kitchen wall. As a nod to the original house, the ceiling fan was kept as-is.

another major change? the flooring, which was half white oak (&#8\2\20 18 — Above: Another major change? The flooring, which was half white oak (“they were very yellow,” Jones says) and half terracotta tile. “We wanted to create the look of Scandinavian white oiled floors,” she says. “To save on costs, we kept the existing oak floor and matched it with new white oak planks (to replace the terracotta tile), then sanded and treated both the old and new, following instructions for traditional white-pigmented Scandinavian floors.”

In the living room, Danish armchairs (found at Brimfield antiques market and re-upholstered in dark green Kvadrat Tonus fabric by Brooklyn interiors firm George & Martha) anchor the space. Jones turned an empty nook under the stairs into log storage: “We liked keeping a lot of the quirky original details of the house as they have so much character,” Jones says. “This was a perfect nook that had no pre-existing use that we could use for log storage,” allowing easy access for fall fires. (And, spotted on a built-in shelf: the Remodelista book!)