The Country Rental: A Floating Farmhouse in Upstate New York - Gardenista
New York architectural designer and builder Tom Givone is on a mission to explore “the contrast between historic and modern and play these extreme elements against one another.” Case in point: Givone’s four-year renovation of a dilapidated 1820 farmhouse in the Catskills that he describes as “a study in contrasts–fully restored to its period grandeur while featuring purely modernist elements.” The house sleeps nine and is available to rent for $600 a night. A simple outdoor shower. Above L and R: New (steel-framed skyscraper windows) and old (traditional rockers on the cantilevered front porch). The kitchen resides in a modern addition that echoes the roofline of the original house. The kitchen has a wood-fired pizza oven faced with oxidized Cor-Ten steel. A look at the kitchen’s oxidized steel framework. In the master suite–one of five bedrooms–the bed is floated in front of an antique mirror and alongside a wood-burning fireplace. An 18th-century Italian marble sink seems to hover, thanks to angled supports concealed in the wall. An austere bathroom combines old and new elements. Faucets from Hudson Reed contrast with a 19th-century wood and zinc bathtub, salvaged from a Lower East Side tenement and encased in stainless steel. To see more of Givone’s work, including dramatic Before shots of the Floating Farm, go to Givone Home.