Decorating Our Farm Home Like a Stylist
When we decided to leave LA for a year and live on a farm I became hyper-fixated on one thing and one thing only: where were we going to live and how was I going to make it feel like home?
As I wrote in my newsletter about how I packed my wardrobe for this big move, I'm a very visual person and tend to quell my anxieties of the unknown through imagery. It's all sort of a fools errand, pretending I can know what something will look like (and therefore, feel like) before the thing is happening. But living somewhere more remote, with fewer connections seemed pretty scary. It sounded like it might be a year where I spent a lot of time at home. So as I prepared myself mentally for a move that would bring me far away from my friends, family, and professional universe it became a major source of reassurance to pour my energy into creating a home I knew I'd be happy spending a lot of time in. One that would feel comfortable no matter what else was going on around me.
But first we had to figure out where the hell we'd even be living. I had a few parameters:
1) It had to be free. It might sound crazy but on and around the farm there are so many random structures, old mobile homes, back houses, employee dwellings, and open land. And a huge piece of what made this big move feasible for us was that the financial risk would need to be very low. I didn't want to move away from home only to spend an arm and a leg renting a place when I had no idea how this move would impact my job. Also, as anyone familiar with agricultural work/farming will tell you – owner and/or employee accommodations are not uncommon on a farm.
2) It had to be pretty. Not the building itself, necessarily, but the area it was located on needed to be farm-y or rural. There are plenty of little corners of the property that don't really face any pastureland and also lots of surrounding areas where one could live but that feel more like a suburban or small city. If we were going to do this, it had to be something that put us in immediate proximity with nature in a way that felt excitingly different than LA living.
Trying to find the right place was hard. At first, we were sure we'd be living in a geodesic dome dropped in a field near another barn (like actually). I began drafting crazy floor plans for how to fit our family in a dome and still have some privacy (and sanity). I figured a geodesic dome lent itself to a lodge-y, Scandinavian, Mid-Century decor vibe. This look tends to have lots of blonde wood, slick wood burning fireplaces, cozy hides and blankets drawing on cold-weather indigenous cultures use of wool and shearling to stay warm. References were slim on Pinterest but there was enough to go off of and I pillaged Facebook marketplace and began saving listings that aligned with this decor DNA.
But after running the numbers, it was going to be super expensive to set it up and run utilities to it. We scrapped this idea and pivoted to a plan where we were going to finish converting a teeny tiny apartment space above some empty horse stalls. The building had a very classic New England shingled barn-y vibe. Old wood and angled ceilings. This was super exciting to me and unlocked an opportunity to lean fully into this Massachusetts adventure. I enjoyed pulling reference images that had that New England backbone but still had the funky eclectic spirit of my own style. I drafted a million different layouts for this space, always orienting the kitchen and table facing the pasture as best I could so as to maximize the view. But no matter how we sliced it, the space was just too small to reasonably fit a family of three with a big dog and an ability to have space to work from home in a way that wouldn't drive us all crazy. This plan was nixed and I truly began to spiral. We were leaving in six weeks and as of yet had not found a place to live.
After that fell through we were pretty lost. Then, Brendan went searching...
(the rest of this article + the video home tour are available exclusively to paid Style School subscribers)