REMARKABLE – JUNE 2007

By Joshua Bodwell

Photography James R. Salomon

Inside an interior designer’s renovated 1800s South Freeport cape

An interior designer’s job is complex. Part artist, part mind reader, a designer must interpret a homeowner’s wants and needs, then use his or her own experience and stylistic sensibilities to create a cohesive, attractive aesthetic—and execute the entire project while trying to stay on deadline and on budget. But what happens when interior designers tackle their own home?

“Designers don’t always find the time to work on their own homes,” interior designer Heidi Gerquest, owner of Gerquest Designs, says with a smile. “It’s a bit like how plumbers always have a leaky faucet in their house.” In the 14 years Gerquest has lived in her early 1800s farmhouse on the outskirts of South Freeport, she’s made time to chip away at a laundry list of decorations and renovations to her own home. Born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family of artists and architects, Gerquest has filled her house with a blend of family heirlooms, one-of-a-kind antiques, and splashes of contemporary furniture. The diverse mix of furnishings has created a home that feels lived-in and welcoming.
Situated atop a small knoll, the white-clapboard farmhouse with big granite front steps and a wide farmer’s porch is located on a secluded 3 acre lot that is bordered by nearly 50 acres of woods. The house is also surrounded by water—on one side lies a pond where people gather in the winter to ice-skate and on the other is a meandering, ever-changing tidal river. Very little work had been done to the cape when Gerquest purchased it, and what little had been done didn’t exactly excite Gerquest. “Most rooms had six layers of wallpaper on the walls, and the bathrooms were horrible,” she remembers. But Gerquest believed in the home’s potential.
Certain features didn’t require as much attention as others. Gerquest admired the wide-pine-board floors, for example, right away. Already worn and pockmarked with age, Gerquest emphasized the rustic charm of the floors by “pickling” many of them—a process that involves rubbing white paint into the stain. The floors she didn’t pickle, she painted by hand, and today her bold stripes and checkerboard designs enliven rooms both upstairs and down.
The most extensive transformation occurred because Gerquest loves to cook. “I wanted to create a kitchen space that encouraged people to hang out,” she says. “I mean, at every good party, people always end up crowded together in the kitchen.”
The cape had a tiny, claustrophobic kitchen that Gerquest transformed into the home’s heavily used mudroom. By converting an 11-by-30-foot shed attached to the back of the house into an extension of the kitchen that included a dining and sitting area, Gerquest was able put in the kitchen she wanted without having to put on an addition or expand into other rooms.
While the renovation of the former shed got underway, Gerquest quickly realized that she didn’t want to part with the room’s unfinished pine floors. “Some of the planks have these wonderful grooves where porcupines scraped their quills into the wood,” she says. “Those boards have such great character.” Portions of the floor too damaged to be saved were patched with old boards brought down from the attic.
The room’s real treasures, however, are its massive windows. The four-foot-wide, seven-foot tall antique windows were salvaged from an English conservatory. After Gerquest discovered them in an antique store, the windows quickly become the focal point of the renovation project. “I designed the room around those windows,” she says. At the brightest end of the long room, Gerquest has placed a couch covered in soft pillows next to a pair of antique chairs covered in red cushions. Gerquest designed the sitting area to be a big invitation to relax, chat with the chef, and savor the smells wafting from the stovetop.
The kitchen, Gerquest says, abandons the fussiness found in some of today’s designer kitchens in favor of a simple sophistication. Gerquest had Sunrise Builders custom-build tall, narrow cupboards to hang above the butcher-block countertops. She put in a three-foot-long slate sink to honor the farmhouse aesthetic, but then added the modern convenience of stainless-steel appliances. Gerquest says the workspace has great flow, and its open-concept design makes it a part of the home she loves to be in. “I cook like I paint,” she says with a laugh, “I don’t follow recipes.”
Today, Gerquest says the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house feels too big for her and her 11-year-old daughter. So she’s put her labor of love on the market and is selling it herself. “It’s so hard to think about leaving,” Gerquest says, looking out at the old lilacs in the side yard, “and especially hard at this time of the year when the doors are open and the warm air is blowing in.”
“There’s no way I’ll ever be able to find a location this special,” she continues. “I’ve felt more comfortable here than anywhere I’ve lived in my life.”