At Home in Connecticut with Charlotte Barnes

[Music] [Music] welcome i'm so glad you're here i'm so glad to be here too and i'm immediately entranced with this entry it's not an entry haul it's like part entry part almost gathering space dare i say it party area i want to have a drink here 100 our party room this was a room that was a very hard room to design and decorate because we were very limited with this long sort of rectangular space and we were it was tricky to put in a fireplace here so i was like what are we going to do with this room and of course i love to entertain and i thought this is just the best party room so everybody can kind of hang out wherever you want i always have hors d'oeuvres there's something to eat on the table it's very sculptural here in the sense that there's um the bones of the architecture and all your collections it feels very edited in instead of a pass-through room i feel like it makes me want to immediately just sit down and kind of soak in your style well thank you thank you if this room i have to say is a lesson in restraint because i am i love layers and i love all different you know things kind of put together but i love my object and don't think that i didn't instantly remark on how you treated the ceiling and you even made the most of that space those are so beautiful thank you love a little hot color every once in a while i wanted to ask you what made the cut here i mean this is such a sumptuous example of your love for editing and collections and it's all kind of contained here it's it's interesting so i have a little bit of everything i have a little bit of my grandmother a little bit of my mother a little bit of me but but essentially what makes the cut is what i can use on the table because we don't have a lot of space for storage so if i'm doing a blue and white table i'll pull blue and white and then i'll put something else in here and and then i just set the table first so it's functional as well as visual what i think is so interesting is here we are in the kitchen dining room area and you have pulled some books yes into this so books don't have to be in a library yeah or in a bookshelf they can be right alongside um tabletop and i'd love to just sit and look outside of the garden and i can read i can do my letters here i can do a little bit of everything and then when we're entertaining i put a wine bucket here i have candles so it's just duty it's like a little studio okay so here's your station you write letters here i do i love that there's no you know so yes and it's such a happy room it's so light we've got a lot of sunlight in this house so i am guilty of thinking that each room in a house should be what it is destined for so study that office guest room library and you're saying well you don't even have that luxury and a lot most people don't right so don't worry about that but everything does have to look pretty yes everything has to bring a day again right yes i think in a small space you really need to have your a game with you yes yes or things that you love i also think that so many people are so focused on putting everything away and having everything you know there's no personality i mean i love my things and i don't care if they're traditional or modern or you know i have a mixture of everything and that's what i think makes something more interesting charlotte you are a lover of black candles the way i am i can see it i love shade handles they're so chic i love black and white obviously i mean this is actually more of a of a brown and cream but this is such an unusual pattern for this is your dining room area this is it yes yes so we have you know breakfast here we work on our laptops here we also it's our kitchen and it's our dining room so when i'm entertaining i have um you know everything is right here or the secretary or the dresser like everything has a function while looking pretty and holding it so pretty elegant and i bet you have one of the few dining spaces that isn't a pass-through room so many people have a kitchen area off of their actual kitchen area that's and they say we never go into the dining room and actually one of the benefits of having a slightly more condensed space is that every room counts so i love that you could probably have a dressy dinner here we're about to have lunch here you do your laptops here yes and it all looks fabulous and works yeah and your kitchen is really just within a stone yeah because of this situation i have i love my english footbath this has been with me for many many years so beautiful everywhere and it never leaves the counter now because it hides the sink that is ingenious so the orchid looks like this wonderfully formal something that would belong in the grandest dining room and here you have it here as this way to literally break up the less glamorous behind the scenes area for your entertaining yes ingenious thank you so susanna remember i told you that i've wallpapered every ceiling yes look up that's wallpaper yes oh come on it is isn't it wonderful it just changed the whole feel of the room what gave you the idea to make it look like wood to make it cozier in here or something yeah i think cozier and warmer and i actually i work in florida a lot so we're doing a lot of pecky cypress and things like that and i just love the warmth of the wood and it just wasn't practical to try and achieve that here and so i wallpapered it so smiling what i'm remarking on is how unusually proportioned this room is and yet you've made it feel so balanced and cozy with these luxurious fabrics and the way that you placed everything in here well how does one tackle a weirdly proportioned room like this well the first thing that was super important to us was a fireplace so the house did not have a fireplace so we had to put one in and this was literally the only wall in the entire house to put a fireplace in and we have a family that we love to spend time with so we all love to play backgammon so we turn the backgammon table at you know holiday time and everybody is here and this is just the room that we all live in what i love about it is the way you kind of bumped it up with these fearless touches this fabric on the wall is crazy isn't it correct i don't know so few people would have the guts to do this even my wallpaper person said to me i don't know if you're going to like this this is a lot of pattern and i just i feel like it's magical it loves it it's transported yeah and i just wanted something that was just a little bit over the top but but forever you know i don't like to decorate for today or a trench like this is while it feels very modern and because of the scale yeah it's this oversized paisley yes and it's blue and white and red but then with the purple and the linen and the green it just kind of just feels good okay but you make that sound so easy and effortless how do you convince somebody that would think most people would say okay i've used red white and blue on the wall in a very bold way am i really supposed to pair it with purple but it works the whole point of decorating and i think this is the whole point of a collaboration with a client and their decorator is trust and patience and if i put this on a piece of paper for someone that didn't trust me and know me they would never never ever have yours get this room so this is the master started as a i think they the previous owners had it as a family room so there was no wall here i can sort of get that family room vibe with all the slanted ceilings and you made it into a master bedroom yes so i had a wonderful person that i worked with and she said you have to put a wall up here and then you know i can wake up in the morning and look at the water and it's so beautiful and so we and you know it's just the two of us so so we were you know able to have you know a nice spacious wonderful room and another desk here and then maximized everything this is like can i just say it feels a little bit like the way people outfit if they if they live in a boat that every little nook and cranny is maximized and yes so smart and the way you made it cozy you didn't put a cold desk chair there you put a yummy upholstery bench to do your laptop i just want to sit there right now and like type away well my husband was typing away there during covent for a long time and i had to get him out of the bedroom yes yes i really like this idea this is something that is not probably meant for what you made it for i yes well i i always put in every almost every room any bedroom i do a stool at the foot of the bed everybody loves to sit down and put their shoes yes so many of us think of our bedroom last yes i thought of my bedroom first and i wanted my favorite lamp and my favorite stool and things that i that i love around me all the time let's remark on the loose site television situation because you know how when people lug their tv up to your bedroom you didn't obviously have a flat wall to hang your tv on exactly so you were like what am i going to do i don't want to put it on some ugly bureau and you made it disappear and look kind of glamorous i mean we all live with televisions yeah we just do and we can't hide everything don't hide away don't bring in something bigger to hide it and the only way to make this room with a hidden television is i would have to cut off half the size because of the eaves so i just like went with that they are so smart we have a tv we watch it sometimes it happens and you made it look so at home here thank you p.s you have the most glamorous door stop ever as i knew you would ah i want to copy that idea did you just wrap a brick with a fabric i wish i could say that that was my idea but i bought that in london probably 35 years ago and it's never left yourself i never left my side it just comes with me everywhere it's the best [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] don't miss another video visit click on the orange queue to subscribe and have quintessence virtually 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Channel: Quintessence

Views: 108,527

Rating: 4.9011917 out of 5

Keywords: Quintessence, at home with, house renovation, carriage house, old house love, Greenwich, Connecticut houses, Charlotte Barnes, architecture, interior design, decorating, Susanna Salk, decor, quintessence video series, design inspiration, house tour, how to decorate, home tour, collecting, NYC shopping

Id: t5WBip4Rd-E

Length: 12min 41sec (761 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 25 2021