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"  Here are some details I&amp;#039;m just a stickler about,&amp;quot; says architect Stacey Jacovini. &amp;quot;When you slam a door, it should sound and feel like a door slamming.&amp;quot;  This is the sort of comment that anyone who has dealt with contractor corner-cutting thrills to hear. Now imagine it coming from your best friend, who has promised to guide you through reno hell.  After being outbid on two houses in a row, ELLE editor-at-large Rachael Combe and her husband, Orlando Knauss, an investment banker at Credit Suisse, found a country house in Sharon, Connecticut, about which they had a gut feeling. As in, this place needs a gut redo but it&amp;#039;s two hours from our Upper East Side apartment and it&amp;#039;s a total steal.  &amp;quot;We called it the turd on the hill,&amp;quot; Combe says. Although it&amp;#039;s set on 10 acres with a pond, a brook, direct views over Macedonia Brook State Park, and neighbors like Oscar de la Renta, the primarily orange and brown (inside and out) &amp;#039;70s house was cave dark, with, mysteriously, few view-facing windows. That, plus a mild, pervasive animal-urine scent, had scared off other buyers. But other buyers didn&amp;#039;t have Combe&amp;#039;s secret weapon: Jacovini, principal of Ascape architecture in NYC, known for her warm reductionist approach to projects for clients such as Cynthia Rowley and the photography agency Art Partner. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve known her since we both had the same first class, Logic and Rhetoric, at Columbia University 17 years ago,&amp;quot; Combe says. &amp;quot;Stacey and her older sister, a fashion stylist, were always the ones who knew exactly how things should look. I already trusted her.&amp;quot;  Jacovini gave her the A-OK before they closed. &amp;quot;It had potential, the way it sat there modestly, and then the land drops down around it and it becomes part of something bigger. I could see it just needed to be opened up to the view, cleaned out, and reorganized.&amp;quot; It was literally cleaned out: The insulation was replaced, thus evicting furry creatures that had made it smell. But a major reorientation and a debrowning were what completely exorcized the suburban-porn-movie feel.  Jacovini moved the kitchen from the building&amp;#039;s front, where it faced the gravel driveway, to occupy the garage&amp;#039;s space looking south for miles over the nature preserve. Without adding to the original footprint, they created a second story above the kitchen for offices, with soaring windows in the stairwell. The old kitchen space&amp;#039;s darkness became an advantage when it was turned into a cozy library. The open living room still connects the four-bed/bath sleeping wing to the kitchen, but painting the wood ceiling and aggressive (yes, it&amp;#039;s really called that) red hearth brick bright white and adding new decks and 20-plus new windows made the space unrecognizable. Jacovini insisted they splurge on details like solid-core wood doors with tricky quarter-inch reveals around the frames, evoking sturdy modernism instead of el-cheapo new construction. &amp;quot;Everyone said I was crazy to work with my best friend, but we never fought,&amp;quot; Combe says. &amp;quot;I knew, from years of hearing her complain when clients treated her like she was the plumber, what the architect&amp;#039;s role is.&amp;quot; In return, Jacovini&amp;#039;s intimate knowledge of Combe&amp;#039;s family made the design process easy. &amp;quot;Orlando and I fight about watching sports, so she put the TV room in a dark corner in the back; she knew I would want it shut away, and Orlando would too.&amp;quot; (Though it&amp;#039;s in hollering distance of the kitchen.) Other things they didn&amp;#039;t have to explain that just happened: a master bath that has a doored-off toilet (&amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re not loosey-goosey&amp;quot;), a serious cook&amp;#039;s kitchen, and room for extended family and dinner parties.  &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a little surreal,&amp;quot; Combe says about creating this beautiful, very grown-up thing with the friend she used to drink beers and pull all-nighters with. When Jacovini is up visiting the house, Combe describes suddenly looking at her husband and baby and thinking, &amp;quot;Where did they come from? Who are these interlopers?!&amp;quot;  DEEP FIXESMove the kitchen...  ...or boldly rethink its layout. Even confirmed bachelorettes end up lolling around in this room the most, so it&amp;#039;s worth making sure it has great light and comfortable seating.   Add bathrooms  Pricey, but it does the trick when it&amp;#039;s time to sell\u2014and you might as well enjoy them while you live in the house rather than making them for strangers.   Paint it white  Well-applied coats of white paint on stained-wood ceilings and exposed brick brighten without killing character like drywall can. Try Benjamin Moore&amp;#039;s Decorator&amp;#039;s White in the Satin Impervo finish.   Reveal the lines  A quarter-inch reveal means there is a slight indent between the door trim and the wall. It&amp;#039;s a small, expensive detail with hugely elegant effect.   SURFACE TRICKSSplurge Small  Combe used Josef Frank&amp;#039;s Aralia fabric to cover seat cushions for her banquette and a hall bench. The smallest hint of a beautiful textile can lift spirits and draw the eye away from flaws. Svenskttenn.se   Pick favorites In a sea of rough choices, Combe found calm at Jonathan Adler and Conran&amp;#039;s, but the house still looks very her.  jonathanadler.com, conran.com   Personalize Combe customized vintage iron furniture from local shop R.T. Facts by powder-coating a garden set acid yellow and perching a stainless steel top on a blue spray-painted pedestal. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/art-design/a9258/this-old-friend-19656/>