A New Hampshire Home was Designed for Family

White-oak posts and beams define the open floor plan, so the living area feels both spacious and cozy. A fieldstone fireplace complements designer Ellen Marment’s palette of soft greens and smoky blues.

An antique bench sets a welcoming tone in the entry. The handy mudroom, behind a wide pocket door, has enough hooks and storage space to accommodate plenty of guests.

Natural shingles and gunmetal-gray trim let the home blend into its surroundings.

The living room’s quiet color scheme keeps the focus on the view through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

A sliding barn door separates the den from the living room.

Texture, in the grasscloth ceiling and wall papers, and pattern, in the rug, window treatments, and sofa, put the cozy in the room the family calls the “cozy den.”

A custom table that expands to seat twelve comfortably anchors the rounded dining room. Marment chose the black wicker chairs with cushiony seats to encourage post-prandial lingering.

A single slab of Olympia marble forms the stove’s backsplash. Brass hardware echoes the glow of the ceiling light and adds a warm touch to the space.

A simple black light with a gold interior glows above the marble-topped island. The forest-green island from Crown Point Cabinetry was the starting point for the home’s palette.

Soft colors and plush textures define the primary bedroom; Marment chose the pressed-flower botanicals above the mantel because, she says, “they balance the heft of the fireplace.”

Sister Parish’s Sintra grasscloth wraps the walls of the primary bath.

The owners of this New Hampshire home cherish family meals. So much so, in fact, that their dining table played a central role in the home’s design. “We laugh about it,” the husband says, “but we really designed the house around the dining room table because we love getting together as a family for mealtime.”

His family has spent time in this part of New Hampshire along the Vermont border for generations. His two siblings and his mother all have homes nearby, and for years, the couple would make the trek from their primary home in Connecticut with their two now-grown children to visit his parents’ lakeside home. “Finally,” the wife says, “we got to the point where we thought it would be nice to have our own place there.”

Architect E. Ronald Gushue had designed the couple’s Fairfield County home, so they called on him again. “Ron is all about symmetry, and we like that,” the wife says.

They also wanted to be sure the house would blend into the hilly, forested surroundings. Gushue walked the twenty-three-acre property, talked with the couple about their wants and needs, and designed a home tailor-made for family gathering. The peaked-roof structure’s front facade does, indeed, have a pleasing symmetry, as well as windows galore to ensure views from nearly every room across a valley and lake to the mountains beyond. Natural shingles and gunmetal-gray trim keep the home from obtruding on the landscape.

Inside, the main living area has an open floor plan that encourages family get-togethers. White-oak beams and posts help delineate individual spaces. “The beams and posts very cleverly define each space without putting up any walls,” says interior designer Ellen Marment.

Marment, a longtime friend and the designer of the couple’s primary home, gave the living area a sophisticated but casual look with a quiet palette of greens and smoky blues against walls painted in a warm white with a soft greige undertone. She and her clients quickly settled on green as a predominant color, starting with the rich forest-green of the kitchen island. “Green is the unifying color, and the island’s beautiful dark green was the jumping-off point,” she says.

A variety of patterns—Cowtan & Tout’s Burnham Stripe fabric on the sofa and Chelsea Textiles Raindrops fabric on the club chairs in the living room—lend interest to the subdued palette. “I tend to use patterns and stripes and plaids for a cozier vibe,” Marment says.“They feel new and fresh but also timeless.”

Elsewhere, blue makes an appearance, most notably in the charming room everyone has taken to calling the “cozy den,” where the ceiling sports a Phillip Jeffries grasscloth in a spunky denim blue.

Blue reigns in the primary suite, too, in a softer version that complements the custom pine bed, white upholstered furniture, and white Thassos marble bathroom vanities.

The homeowners escape to their getaway home as often as they can, and nothing makes them happier than hosting a family dinner around the custom-crafted dining table that sparked the design. “It’s fabulous,” the wife says. “Even if it’s just the two of us we’ll sit at the table for dinner and watch the moon coming up over the lake. It’s really special.”

Project Team
Architecture: ERG Architect
Interior design: Ellen Marment Interiors
Builder: Trumbull-Nelson Construction Company