Something old, something new – all welcoming
grandchildren who enjoy having their own lair — with a television — when they visit.
“Each of the grandchildren has claimed it as their own,” Laraine said.
The Hardys picked out the duplex before it was finished, so they were able to select some of the finishes, including beige walls, deep-brown wood floors, and a brown-andtan granite for the kitchen counters, all blending with their wood furniture.
The style set in the living area — the old-new mix of furnishings with earthy woods and beige with pops of color in the art and muted turquoise — continues throughout the home.
“We like this artist,” said Bob Hardy, pointing to a trio of bold-colored prints by figurative artist Itzchak Tarkay that are mounted over a much-loved antique tea cart by the front door.
The grouping, Laraine said, enhances the eye-catching nature of the art and alerts guests to what art to expect.
In all, nine Tarkays, some of them serigraphs, are one of the unifying design elements of the house.
Another is the ivory Venetian window blinds that came with the duplex. The couple’s former home had draperies, most made by Laraine; the recessed blinds offer a very different, sleek look that takes advantage of sunlight.
“I like the openness,” said Laraine, who hasn’t ruled out the possibility of adding a valance here and there.
The kitchen’s tall white cabinets provide plenty of storage, she said, noting that with counters on three sides of the room, “I have more counters than I need.”
The kitchen’s touch of turquoise: a large, shallow bowl in a sunburst pattern. The kitchen is open to what the floor plan showed as a dining area and a family room. But the Hardys had their own ideas. “We decided we didn’t want two living spaces,” Bob said.
They wanted a home office. And an L-shaped desk fits nicely into what would have been the dining room. Decorative memorabilia and antiques found a home there, from a simple clay model of a church from the couple’s trip to Belize to autographed baseballs to family documents more than a century old.
Lighting coming in through glass doors brightens the dining space, which occupies the floor plan’s family room. And the doors open to a back concrete patio and view of woods.
Anchoring the space is a Chinese-style rug with an elegant pattern of colorful flowers and branches.
When illuminated, “the dark blue is almost iridescent,” said Laraine, adding that “the intense colors, the violets, the blues, the pink” warm the room and pick up the blues around the house. They also echo some of the tones in the art on the walls, including an inexpensive canvas of a watery view that’s over a sideboard.
The dining table seats six, and Laraine said she had not yet needed to add the leaves to make it bigger.
Beds in the two beige-carpeted bedrooms got facelifts with new comforters — a sophisticated white jacquard pattern topped with a turquoise-patterned throw pillow for color in the master suite and a more playful ruffled white comforter with an earthy red pillow for the guest room. A teddy bear, a gift from the couple’s grandson, is usually the guest room’s only occupant.
The master bedroom suite features a large walk-in closet and a full bathroom. Between the bedrooms is a hallway with a second full bathroom, enlivened with turquoise towels, and a laundry room lined with cabinets that hide everything from extra light bulbs to gift wrap.
Two small wood Guatemalan midwives’ chairs decorate the guest room, reminders of a trip the Hardys took a couple of decades ago.
“We carried them home, each came in a rattan bag, they came in pieces,” Laraine recalled. “When we were in the airport, we heard people say, ‘Look at them, what they are using for luggage?’ It was the rattan bags” they were pointing to.
At home, Laraine stained the pieces and assembled the chairs.
What’s really meaningful to them is that their new home’s decor reflects them.
“It’s us,” she said.