<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"ELLE DECOR: You&amp;#039;ve worked with these clients before. How was this project different? RICHARD MISHAAN: I did two apartments for them in New York City. This house, the oldest parts of which date from 1870, is on a horse farm in rural Westchester County where a family with two kids and three dogs can relax and enjoy themselves. ED: And what were your guiding design principles? RM: We wanted to update the house without disrespecting what had already been there, so we layered the traditional and the contemporary to maintain the sense of a 19th-century farmhouse that had been added onto over the years. Click here to see the gallery for &amp;quot;Rural Refinement.&amp;quot;   ED: What original features of the house survived? RM: The wide-plank oak flooring is original, but we ebonized it, which brings it forward in time. Some of the wood beams are original and some moldings were replaced in a style that works with all the periods of the house. ED: Is it fair to say that the living room is the most traditional room of the renovation? RM: Yes, absolutely. But even though it looks traditional, almost everything in it is modern. There are nods to the past, like the American hooked rug from the New England Collection, but it&amp;#039;s up to date in its color and pattern. ED: You chose readily available rugs, some very reasonably priced. RM: I love that mix of high and low, and I&amp;#039;m very much about practicality and the way a house gets used. If they get damaged, many of these rugs can be replaced at no great cost. The media room rug is actually two five-by-eight Soundwave rugs by CB2. ED: Tell us about the design of the media room. RM: This is a high-tech room, so it&amp;#039;s more modern than traditional, yet I wanted it to be extremely comfortable. I&amp;#039;ve found over the years that for the best video projection you want dark color on the walls, so here I used what is, essentially, an Ultrasuede fabric. It very nicely hides the built-in surround-sound components, and it acts like a speaker cover. I used the gilded Phillip Jeffries paper on the ceiling to reflect light, which visually raises the ceiling. ED: The kitchen is huge, but why isn&amp;#039;t there a dining room? RM: They wanted one big space that would accommodate all their needs: family breakfasts, lunch for the grooms who work on the farm, entertaining friends. There used to be a formal dining room, but it&amp;#039;s the media room now.  Click here to see the gallery for &amp;quot;Rural Refinement.&amp;quot;  ED: When do you decide that you need to design your own furniture for a room? RM: In the world of contemporary furniture in particular, most manufacturers don&amp;#039;t want to customize things. The way furniture feels in a room has to do with scale and proportion. In the kitchen we wanted a long, narrow table and couldn&amp;#039;t find one, so I designed one myself. ED: Why did you use two colors of leather on the seating? RM: Partly for visual interest, partly to keep with our theme of then and now. The banquette&amp;#039;s tobacco color is more traditional, and the orange on the chairs is more modern. The plaid wing chair from Jerry Pair was inspired by a shirt the homeowner saw in a magazine. ED: So why no color in the bath? RM: Over the years I&amp;#039;ve come to think that bathrooms should be almost clinical, spalike. The windows here obviously root the house in the past, but it&amp;#039;s a modern bathroom. I guess you could say the freestanding bathtub is a nod to history, to the days before indoor plumbing, but it&amp;#039;s a contemporary Philippe Starck design. The Moroccan side table is just the kind of accent piece I like to use to give a room an unexpected little twist. ED: Of all the rooms, the bar seems the least like the rest of the house. Why is that? RM: Clients sometimes say things as a joke. Mine said something like, Wouldn&amp;#039;t it be funny to have a kind of urban, adult room for cocktails when our city friends come up? So I thought, Why not? The wall\u00ADpaper, from Fromental in England, was perfect for this space, and we bought the signed Pierre Cardin sideboard on 1stdibs. I painted the fireplace black with gold on the carved details, which was a risk, but when it was done, I thought it looked like old Wedgwood. ED: What would be your most important piece of advice to any client? RM: Know how you live, and make your house serve you. You don&amp;#039;t have to have the rooms other people think you should have. You aren&amp;#039;t stuck with the function that has been assigned to a space by someone else. If you want a huge kitchen or a funky bar, have it. That&amp;#039;s what will make you happy in your home. What The Pros Know \u2022 The easiest palette for a room, says Mishaan, is tone-on-tone neutrals with the addition of two accent colors. In the living room, those hues are the blue on the trim (Ralph Lauren&amp;#039;s Rowboat) and the orange-red of the rug. \u2022 Accentuating the moldings by painting them a color different from the walls and ceiling is like adding piping to a piece of upholstered furniture, says Mishaan: &amp;quot;You draw attention to the edges, which modernizes the look. Creating a contrast makes everything pop.&amp;quot; \u2022 Mishaan specified two different woods for the kitchen cabinetry: walnut and a lighter oak. The variety adds visual interest to the room. The walnut cabinets have black-granite countertops, the oak have white granite. Click here to see the gallery for &amp;quot;Rural Refinement.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elledecor.com/home-remodeling-renovating/home-makeovers/a5394/rural-refinement-a/>