Wow Home Idea

Victoria Pearson SENGA MORTIMER: Many people choose a decorator after seeing his or her work in a magazine, but you're on TV. Did you two connect through Million Dollar Decorators ? MARY McDONALD: Kimm Uzielli and I actually met in high school; we've been friends for decades. And coincidentally, I went to college with her husband, Alessandro, who is the great-great-grandson of Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company. When they married, started a family, and found this Georgian Revival in Beverly Hills, it was a natural fit to work together. We already had an aesthetic understanding. Throughout the project, we laughed all the time about those high-school years. KIMM UZIELLI: Mary has always been my inspiration. She's a fairy godsister! She just exudes style. And she gets who I am. I'm so glad I enlisted a dear friend for our home instead of simply hiring any decorator. What was the design assignment? MM: A decade ago, when it began, Kimm and Al knew they wanted ...

Anne Schlechter MIMI READ: I've only been to Richmond once before, and it seemed chockablock with Georgian houses. Maybe I blinked. Are there lots more of these exotic specimens? LEIGH ANNE MUSE: Not at all. Richmond has many old homes, most of them extremely traditional in the English or American sense. This one's very un-Richmond. I feel like I'm in Santa Barbara or Boca Raton. LAM: It's a marvelous Spanish Colonial Revival home that could indeed be in some sunny resort. It was built in 1934 for a man who had ties to Miller & Rhoades, a department store that's an old Richmond icon. He was a movie buff, fascinated by the California lifestyle, and he liked to entertain. The living room is enormous. The dining room seats a crazy amount of people. Anne Schlechter The architecture has a great vibe — and the setting is blockbuster. LILI O'BRIEN: In Richmond, we call this Mansion Row. Grand European-inspired estates border a 300-acre park with beautiful trees...

James Merrell LISA CREGAN: This was the late Albert Hadley's vacation cottage, wasn't it? What was it like being asked to redo the home of a legend? TODD ROMANO: A longtime client called to tell me she'd just purchased a house in Naples and said, "Actually, I think it was once owned by a friend of yours." I thought, Oh my God, she bought Albert's house! He'd furnished it so sparingly — a wicker chair here, a bust on a pedestal there — it was incredibly simple. But it was gorgeous. House Beautiful published it in 2000. Now it's a winter getaway for an independent woman with grown children and grandchildren. My job was to figure out how to accommodate a family here. And you somehow did it without forsaking any of Mr. Hadley's elegance. This house is a great example of how you can use sophisticated French furniture in a casual setting. It doesn't have to be all rattan and vinyl just because it's Florida! Gilded furniture would, admittedly, ...

Luke White In the Swedish archipelago, designer Marshall Watson let the landscape guide his palette. The result is a serene summer house that's the essence of Scandinavian style. CHRISTINE PITTEL: If I have only one life, let me live it in Sweden.  MARSHALL WATSON: It really is idyllic. These clients — he's American, she's Swedish — live in the United States but move over here for six weeks every summer. It was important to them that their three daughters have a close relationship with the wife's family. Now the girls are almost grown and completely bilingual, and they have a whole set of Swedish friends. Where exactly is the house? On an island in the archipelago outside Stockholm. The main house was built in the 1970s in the northern Swedish style with hand-hewn logs — square, not round. Then there's a guest- house that we basically rebuilt, since it had minimal electricity and plumbing — and no charm. A barn, a s...