The transformation of Faith Popcorn's Wainscott home
Trend setter Ani Antreasyan recently redecorated futurist Faith Popcorn's guest house in Wainscott. Credit: Lee Fryd
Faith Popcorn, Madison Avenue’s famed go-to consultant for predicting trends and the woman who coined the term “cocooning,” obviously cares about a comfortable home. Look at the gut renovation of her waterfront 1,100-square-foot guesthouse in Wainscott.
Popcorn’s main house is a dark hued cocoon, but next door she chose trend setter Ani Antreasyan, part of the new breed of decorators redefining Hamptons style, to create what she calls a loft-like space that “has a very light feel, like it’s floating in the sky.”
The home was originally an ice house, built in the 1930s, where hunters brought their fish, fowl and venison to be stored. Years later, it was bought as a cottage, and the two bedrooms and two bathrooms were added as an extension.
“It belonged to a single man, for more than 30 years, who was rarely here,” says Antreasyan.
The house needed work.
“I told her it was all about the view,” recalls Antreasyan, who favors natural colors and mixing antique rough-hewn accents with hard edge modernism. “We looked through the glass doors and I said, ‘This is it. We’re getting the sky and the water.’"
When Antreasyan talks about mixing her own custom "colors," she's talking about the perfect bluish gray stain on the resanded floor and a combination of custom whites and creams on the walls and ceilings. They opened up the kitchen from a dark brown room to a gray and brushed steel. “It became a loft overlooking the water," she says.
Such decorating is usually a collaboration. “We start collecting things," she says. "You put them all together and it becomes a story."
Here, a starting point was the serpentine sconces Popcorn had bought in an East Hampton antique show that they put over the mantel. In the living room, Antreasyan replaced the plastic floor with vintage oak flooring that came from a church in Sag Harbor.
“The leather chairs are vintage, from online auctions,” she continues. The marble Italian oval dining table was also an web find. And because it is a guesthouse, the kitchen and couch came from Ikea, including a deep sink “so you can wash small pets, or do potting.”
