2023 marks 25 years since Ken De Loreto and I landed in the Berkshires and I opened my one-man architectural design practice, RhDesign llc. Both were the greatest leap-of-faith decisions either of us have ever made…and probably the best.
In that time, I’d conservatively estimate I’ve worked on renovating or creating at least 250 homes, restaurants, and shops across the Berkshires and beyond. My goal has always been to help each client live beautifully by interpreting their dreams into a three-dimensional reality that they alone could not. Most projects have taught me lessons about what makes a house a home, but no place has taught me more than our own Southfield village home. For a quarter of a century, this humble property has served as my personal design laboratory to experiment with materials, refine concepts and ideas, test contractors, and play…the most successful ideas can then be incorporated into many of my client projects in one way or another.
The front and back of the Main house as we first saw it in 1998 (on the left). The front elevation toward Norfolk Road had that classic wraparound porch and simplicity we romanticize, but the back was definitely more Clampett in feel (before they struck black gold, Texas tea!).
There are few design articles that excite me more than the classic “Before and After” stories. So that’s what I would like to share with you here. The “before”, when two naive guys moved to the Berkshires to their first house in 1998, and the “after” (or more accurately, the “current”) of what is now known as Cocktail Shaker Village (CSV). My hope is that our design lessons learned here will help you begin or continue to live beautifully in your own home.
Welcome to CSV@XXV. Cheers!
On the left, Ritch (with a disastrous bleach job gone bad) and Ken, on the day they packed up and moved from Boston’s north shore to the Berkshires. And 25 years later, celebrating on the porch of Cocktail Shaker Village, a perfect perch for sunset cocktails.
1. WE ARE ONLY STEWARDS OF OUR HOMES
Our homes often outlast us. They morph and flex. We adapt them to our needs and wants, but eventually they move on to their next residents who have their own needs and wants. Our responsibility is to protect our homes while they protect us, to build our memories, grow our families and preserve our histories, knowing that the house you love so much will probably have a future without you. But while you are the master of your domain, don’t be afraid to express your own unique self. Worry less about resale value and more about making your home. The future owner will most likely rip out that backsplash tile you obsessed about anyway. Times change. Tastes change. Stewards change.
The wraparound porch of the Main house was very much a huge selling point and continues to be the center of sunset cocktail hour. But the three-season porch, added in 1999, was essential to give us that room large enough for a bug-free dinner party.The front room in the main house, forced to play the role of living room, although really too small to accommodate today’s lifestyle, morphed through many stages of form and function over the past 25 years. Now, with the addition of new art and furnishings that migrated north after our Miami sale, and the elimination of a tv armoire, it serves as the perfect keeping lounge, complete with a disco ball and projection lighting.The Keeping Lounge, (which may have changed more often than any other room in the house), recently gave up it’s tv-watching function to be replaced with a pair of Le Corbusier Petit Confort chairs and a Frankensteined side table made of a raw-edge wood slab affixed to a Saarinen metal base. A gilt-framed photo of Institut du Monde Arabe, shot by Ritch while working in Paris in 2008, was added to the art wall which features pieces created by friends over the years. A Keith Herring-inspired rug and a shagreen sideboard cabinet were added to finish out the room which now functions perfectly for enjoying cocktails when inclement weather forces us inward.
2. EXPERIENCE YOUR HOUSE and LEARN FROM IT
When planning a renovation for a client, I prefer that they have lived in the home for a period of time and understand the pros and cons of it as it is. Pay attention to it, observe yourself as you move through the home, look at the light, the flow, the sounds, and allow the home to speak to you. Of course, the house can be changed, but often the less considered option is how we might change, develop better habits and routines, and live beautifully with less disruption.
For instance, in our situation, Ken’s initial desire for our ramshackle manse was to “blow it out”, “enlarge the ground floor”, and “open up the kitchen”. Apparently, (he says) I flatly told him, “If that’s the house you want, Ken, you bought the wrong house”. OK, sometimes I can be a bit blunt. But it turned out to be true. We rightsized our furnishings, tailored our built-ins, and modified our expectations to discover a perfect flow for the way we live and entertain. If we had “blown it out” as originally considered, we wouldn’t have the working pantry we love or the walls for art opportunities that surround us and enrich our lives on a daily basis.
The dining room is very much the aorta of the house, not because of its use, but because its got doorways on every wall. So a Saarinen round table, Italian chairs and a printed sisal rug ground the room while allowing full circulation into the three season room, powder room, keeping lounge and kitchen. It also is home to our main bar, repurposed from an old Buggywhip Factory display cabinet. After all, what would Cocktail Shaker Village be without a bar?We both love to cook, but the original kitchen had only an old hoosier for counter space, a small electric stove and one sink cabinet with a blue tiled top. Without enlarging the spaces at all, we took a “divide and conquer” attitude, shifting many prep and storage kitchen functions into the back pantry (along with new under-counter laundry and a dishwasher). This shift took pressure off the main room and we can actually have folks hang out in this tiny kitchen without being in the way of cooking.
3. THINGS LAST
I’ve always believed, “Don’t live with something you do not love,” whether it’s a person or a spatula. Looking around our home now, I’m shocked that the marble-topped gurney, the chalkboard-painted countertop, and the letterpress drawer in the bath are at least 25 years in situ and still ticking. Buy quality. Buy vintage. Get the best you can muster. Even if you’re not highly organized, chances are everything will look better if you like everything you see. So be thoughtful of everything you bring into your home. Do you love it? Do you think it’s beautiful? If not, keep looking, because it just may be there for a very long time. On the flip side of this lesson, don’t feel shackled by past decisions if that love has waned. Paint can be changed. Anything you buy, you can sell or donate. Allow that fact to give you the freedom to experiment and play with your space. Nothing is forever.
A desire for minimal cabinetry in the kitchen meant we needed to explore alternative storage solutions that still looked great. To my point of “don’t bring anything into your home that you do not love”, nearly everything here is on display, from the copper-backed platter wall, the repurposed glass-walled dish cabinet (it used to be a floor-standing china hutch), the glass-topped bar (so you can see the liquor options from above), to the vintage stainless steel medical cabinet in the powder room. Even the paper products are on displayThe original up-stairway ended in a tiny room that was actually rented out as a bedroom occasionally. Now it’s a dressing room and only real closet on the upper floor which includes two bedrooms, a recently renovated bath and lots of art.
4. TWO HOUSES ARE BETTER THAN ONE
This lesson may seem to be a bit more specific to us, but now that we’ve had the chance to live in a home comprised of two small houses, a 1,600 sq. ft. main house and a separate 1,400 sq. ft. carriage barn, I can’t imagine living any other way! Yes, when we first bought it, the two-house idea made sense for a very practical reason. It was the first time Ken and I would be cohabitating. If we didn’t work as a couple, at least we’d both still have places to live! Not all that romantic, but very practical! The two-house situation took some pressure off our new relationship.
We also both work from home. Ken’s work is verbal, tons of conference calls and now Zoom meetings, whereas mine is quiet and needs less distraction. So, again, two small houses (and private spaces) are better than one, for us. Don’t have two houses as your home? Consider how to shape private spaces for the people in your home. Allow them to express their tastes and bring their authentic selves to those spaces. Just as a family is made up of unique individuals, a home can and should reflect that.
The carriage house was a dark, raw outbuilding that, for some reason, allowed the realtor to open its padlock for the first time when we looked at the property. Originally a three-stall horse barn, it had been converted to a four-season living space by a previous owner. But it left a lot to the imagination. It now wears a black and white tuxedo look on the back half that compliments the original cedar shingles of the carriage room. And it has the perfect pitch and orientation for a black-on-black solar array that offsets its electrical usage all year.The lower level of the back room, originally three horse stalls, had been converted to a full kitchen and bath before we purchased it. The main source of heat was a wood stove in the corner, so by adding an open-flame propane stove (on a thermostat) and shifting its location, we were able to add French doors out to the pond view, previously unseen, and expand toward the main house by replacing an exterior door that tended to flood with a 5’ x 9’ bump out, now Ritch’s closet.The redesign of the kitchen was inspired by Airstream trailers of yore and the functions were tailored to breakfast needs. Espresso, toast, a Bosch four-burner stove, Advantium oven and Summit 2’ x 2’ fridge/freezer handle all the needs of daily life and overflow when guests stay over. The bath, originally one of the horse stalls, features a curbless shower, heated slate floor and custom/repurposed fixtures to create a unique, timeless and playful space. The feel is “spa, down on the farm.”Upstairs at the carriage house may be the biggest surprise in either structure. Although the rooflines are low at the kneewalls, and the original hayloft stairs can be challenging, the bifurcated space allows for a very generous dual work-station office, tv/living area and library, and a separate well-appointed king-sized bedroom with glass on 3 sides, overlooking the pond and the gardens. Because of the shed dormers we added years ago, it has a distinctive tree-house feel, filled with the sounds of bull frogs and peepers in the summer months.
5. BUDGET DOES NOT EQUAL TASTE
Some of our biggest lessons came in the early years of living at CSV, when our bank accounts were much, much smaller. The constraint of limited funds meant that we had to be creative: repurpose, adapt, scour tag sales, auctions and even dumpster dive (a personal passion that has served me well since college!). I cherish the creativity that comes from constraint.
On the flip side of that, I’ve had clients with seemingly unlimited budgets, and in the end did it result in a more beautiful, inspiring project? Not necessarily. For me, the amount of money a person spends on a faucet or chandelier in their home does not guarantee anything other than the bill. Find a way to express your authentic self in your home. If you can’t do this on your own, find someone who can help you create your unique environment, someone who listens and can translate your image into a 3-D world. After all, the next steward of your home will probably do the same thing, so enjoy it now.
In the end, Cocktail Shaker Village is a true reflection of who we are and have become through our 25 years of living here. Is the home we’ve created for everyone? Definitely not. Have we made choices based on what’s “good for resale” when that day comes? Heck, no. But as we continue to evolve, and the property with us, we find endless delight in it. And that makes it home…for us. And we thank you for visiting.
The original upstairs bath had its issues. Over time, the vanity got a new look just by removing the decorative backsplash, a new vessel sink and faucet, lights and mirror. Then new marble hex tile replaced the dingy 4″ x 4” floor tiles. And most recently Ken had the old steel clawfoot tub, built into a wood and tile surround, removed and replaced with a spacious walk-in shower, complete with a glass enclosure, new black wall tiles with a distinctively handmade feel, and a custom wainscot design that references the patterns in the tiles, or martini glasses. It all depends on your perspective.
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The original cedar clapboards of the main house had to be stripped of many years of dingy paint when we first bought it in 1998. It lived a naked life for many years, but eventually its warm cedar tones turned murky and we decided to “practice what we preach” and stain the house ebony. Ritch has been designing black houses in his practice for over two decades, and even though it’s now gotten trendy, we still love its crisp image in the landscape, how it compliments the trees and shrubs around it, and its mysterious visage at night.
Architect Pamela Sandler redesigns a home on Onota Lake. Her goal was to preserve the legacy of summers at the lake, while opening up the home to light, movement, and, most importantly, to the lake itself.
Make your own history in this brand new 4,200 sf home, easy maintenance and great location, offered by Maureen White Kirkby of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Barnbrook Realty.
