“When I went over to their place,” ten Have recalls, “I could see that something had gone wrong. Coco is warm and lovely. She’s dynamic. She’s the mother of four kids. She loves color, she wears patterns. Yet the interiors were all gray and inert.”
The house is located on an expansive property in Millerton, New York, owned by Tim’s parents. They occupy an elegant neo-Georgian manse. “But this house is very different,” he says with a laugh. “It was built in 1982 and was a haphazardly furnished, orange shag-rug-sporting, ranch-style house. I began using the place after college, and it has since undergone multiple transformations and transitions.” Adds his wife, “It was a real hodgepodge.”
“The open floor plan was the real challenge,” says ten Have. “The struggle was how to program the main room, which is so sprawling. I used a graphic wallpaper from Adelphi Paper Hangings to tie it together. Its density makes it almost a neutral.” The living room’s custom wool-and-raffia rug was the first item she selected. “It reminds me of an American jacquard coverlet,” she says, “and I wanted the interiors to have a bit of an American folk-art feel.” A Gustavian bench, a formal daybed, and a softly skirted custom sofa are gathered on the red rug under the sky-blue ceiling. The Swedish chairs in the dining area came from London, the custom rug is by Zak + Fox, and the pine buffet was found at auction. “My greatest joy is hunting,” she confesses.
“The original assignment was to just tackle two rooms,” says Coco. “It snowballed from there.” As the project progressed, the choices became only bolder. Scale jumps from diminutive to oversized, often in a single room. The mix of patterns in the bedrooms, with their distinctive headboards, are surprising yet never off-putting. The color palette is rich but slightly off—dusky, earthy, almost clashing in places. The library is cozy, but hardly sedate. The screened porch’s mint-green ceiling and trim hold the eye nearly as strongly as the stunning view.
