The Winter Living Room: So called because the woodstove heats the entire home. The blue sofa is an auction find, and the silk-damask mushroom pouf is from Maison Gerard. The iron fungi chandelier is from Jake Szymanski’s Flora collection.
Photo: Matt Dutile
When furniture designer Jake Szymanski started scouring the Hudson Valley for a house, his mission was to find “something that no one had touched.” But for nearly two years, he says, most everything he looked at had been “whitewashed or had weird extensions.” Finally, his broker took him to a 1952 log cabin in Stone Ridge that had been languishing on the market. “She tells me there is this gorgeous pond in front,” he says. “And I go, ‘Pam, this is kind of a swamp, let’s be honest.’ ” That didn’t deter him, nor did the ancient wall-to-wall carpets: “You couldn’t tell the original color. It was gross, gross, gross.”
Still, Szymanski could see that “this house was loved, and good things have happened in this home. I felt I could bring that out,” he says. He began by pulling up the carpeting to reveal the pine floors throughout the three-bedroom cabin. The stone fireplace was brought to life by removing decades of dirt and ash. The kitchen was the only place needing a gut renovation, and Szymanski added modern appliances and a worktable hung with fabric to hide the pots and pans stored below. In fact, fabric panels and curtain treatments became central to his design to break up the monotony of the cabin’s walls. “The logs have a very sort of orange hue to them,” he says. “So the fabric was my solution to giving me something to look at that’s not just logs.”
Six months into the project, a downpour washed away a beaver dam that had created the swampy pond. Now, there’s a stream on the property. And after about two years of restoring the cabin, Szymanski and his husband, Josh Powers, got married there under a willow tree.
He never expected to be in a log cabin again: His parents had fixed up one in a former Colorado gold-mining town, where the family lived until he was 5. Later on, when his mother brought up that first home, “I had this reaction like, Ugh, I would never live in a log cabin,” he says. “What’s funny to me is just, as you get older, those things sort of work themselves back into your life.”
The Dining Room: The home is populated with prototypes from Szymanski’s design studio in the Bronx, many of which were inspired by the cabin. “This is a place to play with a more fun, romantic side,” he says. The hanging lights are from the Flora collection; the dining chairs are also by Szymanski.
Photo: Matt Dutile
The Kitchen: The window-and-island fabric is a hand-blocked print from Zak+Fox. The handmade backsplash tiles are from Clay Squared, and the cabinets are from Reform.
Photo: Matt Dutile
The Winter Living Room: Szymanski designed the table. The base of it — and the squirrel motif running throughout the house — is a tribute to the couple’s standard poodle, Ella.
Photo: Matt Dutile
From J.M. Szymanski’s Flora collection.
Photo: Matt Dutile
The Summer Living Room: The stone fireplace is original to the cabin, and the white coffee table is from the Zak+Fox showroom. Szymanski designed the red mohair sofa with horsehair fringe and iron buttons.
Photo: Matt Dutile
The iron and shearling chair is a J.M. Szymanski design. The table is by Carlo Bugatti. “This is my interpretation of a more maximalist look,” Szymanski says.
Photo: Matt Dutile
The Stairwell: The stairs separate the winter and summer living rooms. Szymanski designed the bench with the fringe and found the sheet-metal console table at an auction.
Photo: Matt Dutile
Szymanski collects hats on his travels. The woven banana one on the tabletop is from Costa Rica. The wood table was left by the previous owner.
Photo: Matt Dutile
The Bedroom: “The cabin had plaster on the walls, but it had become very dingy. So I gave the walls a new coat,” Szymanski says.
Photo: Matt Dutile
The Porch: The front porch overlooks a stream and wooded valley. The Adirondack-style table is from a local antique store.
Photo: Matt Dutile
Photo: Matt Dutile
Szymanski (right) and his husband, Josh Powers.
Photo: Matt Dutile
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