Modern Farmhouse Style Summer 2021

Perhaps you’ve always dreamed of living in a log cabin or of building a sprawling farmhouse with a mountain view. Or perhaps you’re ready to upgrade from a starter home to your forever home and are just waiting for the right moment to make the move. But the truth is that waiting for that perfect moment can often mean inaction. Sometimes you have to look beyond the daunting parts and realize that a dream is a here-and-now opportunity, if you’re courageous enough to grab it. Such is the case with several of the homeowners featured in this issue, who bravely turned their dreams into reality. For Evan and Stephanie Walsh, that meant bidding on a dilapidated log cabin on a 2-acre property outside Boston, knowing full well the amount of money…

Classic Scheme A black-and-white palette modernizes this Cape Cod-style house. When covered with a coat of white paint, worn red brick takes on a new life. A new front door with sidelights, wide shutters, and appropriately sized window boxes beneath the dormers—all in a rich black hue—work to elevate the exterior’s style quotient. Windows with black frames echo the accent color. Natural elements such as a layered garden, overflowing window boxes, and evergreen topiaries soften the high-contrast palette. Copper gutters accessorize the facade with timeless sophistication. Nautical Nod This raised Connecticut home was rebuilt after Hurricane Sandy to meet new elevation requirements. The owners chose to make the mandated space between the ground and the main level tall enough to be usable, so the ground level features a covered patio space for the…

lesson number 1 A mix of vintage and modern art pieces—an ancestor’s self-portrait, a contemporary piece created by you, a thrifted antique mirror—gives soul to crisp, clean walls. “I love the saying, ‘I’m frugal, that’s why I don’t buy cheap,’” Danie Gohr says with a laugh. But she’s not kidding. This creative homeowner has a distinctive eye for style and has deftly guided her home from builder basic to a chic modern farmhouse dressed in a style she calls “cozy minimalist.” And she has done it without breaking the bank. When Danie and her husband, Chuck, decided to build in 2017, they took the builder’s floor plan into their own hands and imaginations to make it what they wanted—increasing the size of the pantry, raising the ceiling height, and adding porches front and back.…

Call it the farmhouse that party planning built. In 2009—before Instagram was even founded—Kara Allen started an event-planning blog and wasn’t sure what would come of it. “I’d stay up way too late into the night [working on it] when my kids were babies,” she says. She never would have guessed how many people would crash her soiree. When her site started ranking on Google, “I thought, I could make money doing this! It blew up from there,” she says. Kara’s Party Ideas is now nothing short of a fete-planning empire, with more than 268,000 Instagram followers, a book, and devoted clients around the globe. Kara and her husband, Ben, have reveled in their success by building the farmhouse of their dreams on 5 acres in Utah, which they share with…

lesson number 4 Less is more when adding ceiling lights to a modern farmhouse kitchen. Keep fixtures simple, then give them an uptick in personality with vintage-look Edison-style bulbs. Alana Guglielmo has an endless prop closet and, as the owner of Mixed Greens Event Design, an unwavering focus when she is creating lively backdrops for her clients’ soirees. When it comes to her own surroundings, she confesses, she’s much less resolute. “I have ever-changing tastes and am constantly rethinking my selections and reimagining the possibilities,” she says. “Just when I think my house is complete, I stir up a new project.” When she and her husband, Rob Hornbuckle, decided to move away from New York City with their boys, an original Sears home in Westchester County, New York, absorbed Alana’s attention. Though the…

Evan Walsh always wanted to live in a log cabin. His wife, Stephanie, didn’t share his enthusiasm. “It was my dream, but my wife’s nightmare,” Evan says. Still, Stephanie gave him her blessing to bid on a log cabin in Medfield, Massachusetts. Secretly, she hoped the deal would fall through, “but ultimately I trusted his judgment,” she says. They closed on the bucolic, 2-acre property less than two months after their wedding. Despite the home inspector’s assumption that they would demolish the cabin, which Stephanie recalls as something out of a horror movie, the couple got to work. They cleared the thicket of pines around the dwelling, painstakingly rehabilitated the interior, and hired architect Caitlin Struble of Winslow Design to design an airy, open-concept addition. “They wanted something that spoke to the…