Coastal Glam in Southport
October 1, 2017
When a fire destroyed a designerâs home, she revisited furnishings from her past for a freshâand inexpensiveâapproach to her new space.
Text by Julie Dugdale   Photography by Michael Partenio   Produced by Stacy Kunstel
When life gives you lemons⌠you know how the rest goes. Truer words were never spoken when it comes to designer Mindy Schwarzâs home in the coastal hamlet of Southport. At 1,800 square feet, the cozy house is the picture of sophistication and charm spread across three stories in a mix of English architecture, eclectic repurposed furnishings, and modern-glam flair. A sleek palette of white and gray showcases unexpected flourishes, like bold textured fabrics and cheeky sculptures, which convey a carefully executed aesthetic.
The kicker? Itâs all because of a fire that ravaged her previous residence, which sheâd just finished clearing out and redecorating. She needed to rent a place to live in, fast, and she needed to make it feel like home quickly, too. âI think my adrenaline kicked in; I did this in two days,â Schwarz says.
She was able to salvage just one item from the ashes, a marble counter that she repurposed as a tabletop in her new kitchen. Most of her current furnishings came from basement storage at her parentsâ home. âI resurrected all of these things I had just removed from my house, because everything new got destroyed,â she says.
For instance, the white-trimmed glass accent table above a gray bench in the sitting area? It was part of the decor in her childhood home. The piece changed hands to friends of her parents before Schwarz saw it years laterâand wanted it back. âI fell in love with this older stuff all over again,â she confesses.
Schwarz, who has a background in nutrition and no formal design training, began her career almost by accident, starting with her love for antiques. Buying up treasures all over New England, she decided to host a sale and, in the process, accrued a roster of clients, some of whom remain with her today for design and home building services through her Westport-based business, House Warriors. âIâm a very strange creature,â she says. âI donât draw. Itâs all in my mind, and it comes out exactly how I want it to without ever putting a pen to paper.â
Perhaps nothing illustrates this talent more than her new space. Schwarz favors a neutral palette, though she admits she has a thing for rotating funky accents. âI never commit to a color scheme in any place, and Iâm always changing my throw pillows,â she says. âThose Bengal tiger pillows in the living room? You might come back another day and theyâd be gone.â
Beneath them, the âinvisibleâ chairs from Ikea are a calm presence against the built-ins, which house lamps fashioned from old zinc columns. Designed by Schwarz and made by Cranberry Hill Lighting in Maine, the lamps play off the gray lounge chairsâfloor samples from West Elmâwhich add texture and pizazz to the living space. A pair of 1940s sofas she found on Craigslist look coastal-chic in custom-made slipcovers. âI donât have anything expensive,â Schwarz says.
They may not have cost her an exorbitant amount, but thatâs not to say many of Schwarzâs picks arenât valuable. Her favorite piece, a seahorse sculpture on the living room coffee table, once served as the top of a fountain. âIâd admired it in a friendâs house for many years, and one day she showed up at my house with it for my birthday,â she says. âThe cage on top is from HomeGoodsâitâs a $900 seahorse with a $9.99 topper. I love the way itâs put together with three pieces that didnât start together.â
Some might call that sentiment a metaphor for her entire home. After the fire, Schwarz was forced to work with what she had in storage, what she could repurpose from the old house, and what she could collect from easy-access stores in the span of a few days. Except that nothing about the coastal-slash-glam space seems forced. Somehow the flow is just rightâa mĂŠlange of old-new, subtle-bold, and indoor-outdoor contrasts (the dining roomâs table base and chairs were salvaged from her old patio and garden, for example) that looks effortless despite the less-than-ideal circumstances. âWhen you have all the things there, you can work magic,â Schwarz says of reacquainting herself with her storage castoffs. âIâm a house warriorâI just keep going till itâs the way I want it. I work frequently with a builder, and he always wants to know how everythingâs going to look from the beginning. And Iâll say, âNo, itâs a story.â As we go, Iâm constantly changing the ending.â
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