Where We Call Home

This home has helped me for sure come back to myself.

And so when I think about what I want for someone when they walk

in is that they're feeling that connection

to themself, that the house kind of invites the exhale.

One of the things we always hope

people have a feeling of when they come

in is that they're welcome and that there's, you know,

there's a magic here.

This is our schoolhouse where we call home.

I'm Sharon.

I'm Colin.

And this is our home in Woodstock, New York.

There's just a peacefulness here that you can find

hard to access some places.

And it's a place where you really

feel like what's important comes to the forefront.

We moved here from my hometown just outside of DC in Maryland.

I really love DC, but for whatever reason we,

felt a deep calling to being in a more rural location,

more connected to nature.

And it was actually like we had to summon the courage that

moving into that was worth leaving behind so much

of what we really loved about.

DC.

Can we be brave enough to go after that something more?

We were absolutely not looking for an octagon

or a schoolhouse or even something like that.

We weren't even looking for necessarily a big renovation.

Seeing it was like, oh, I guess maybe we are.

This is the mudroom when you enter into the space.

For me, this is practical and beautiful.

We really wanted to have it be kind of the tough space that

could take on the elements.

So we wanted to have the boards here instead of drywall.

But we liked the splitting the board,

so it kind of gave like an airy feel on the top.

Visually that it feels calm, but you

get the moodiness, but not the weight of the color.

So now we're leaving the mud room and off into the octagon.

I remember when we found this place.

I think Sharon woke me up at 3:00 AM,

which is not the first time she's woken

me up at 3:00 AM to see a house that we've lived in.

Not the last.

We were looking at pictures of this place,

and it was this wild property that had no apparent bedrooms

or bathrooms.

And she's like, this place looks amazing.

And I'm like, I mean, yeah, it kind of cool, but I don't know.

That's like something we could do,

but we didn't know if we had it in us,

but it was just enough of a reason to come,

like we had to come see it.

The school was founded in the '70s.

The octagon was the main school building.

The founder of the school, it turns out she,

like so many people, came here for the festival,

the Woodstock Festival.

And then she was like, I want to stay,

and I want to make a difference through nursery school.

When we came in, it's just absolute clutter, chaos all

on the ground.

The school had been closed for probably three years or so.

But we just looked up and we just saw the ceiling

and we were blown away.

And I remember Josh, the agent,

saying to us, oh, maybe we have some visionaries here

from Maryland.

And I was like, yeah, maybe we are

some visionaries from Maryland.

The roof here is the only thing

left from the original space.

And one of the design decisions we had to make,

which we really sweated, was, will

we leave it in its original form untouched or will we paint it?

Will we stain it?

And I'm so glad we decided to leave it alone.

One of the challenges that we had not anticipated when we

decided to turn an octagon into our house

was furnishing an octagon is not easy.

So it means that we're often moving things

around until something clicks.

But the way that we've handled it now,

so here we are in the dining room.

And we brought in these shelves.

We like plants.

And this is kind of like an indoor greenhouse,

because the skylight is so big.

And so by having plants around breaks up what you're seeing

visually through the space.

So when you're sitting here with friends and family,

it just feels cozier.

So now we're entering into the living spaces, where we get

to hang out and appreciate and just sit and relax,

which is something we're learning to do.

I'm learning to do.

And this helps us to do that.

Think of it like a great hotel, like a lovely boutique hotel.

You come in, there's the lobby, like you sit, you're upright,

you're checking in, you're getting organized.

You might go over and have a meal at the dining room.

You might want to chill out and have a cocktail in the lounge.

And so I really think at this scale

that really works is just this is the lobby

and this is the lounge.

And welcome to is it a study?

Is it the music room?

Who knows, because it's always changing.

But both of those functions are happening in here now.

So here we have the boards, just like out in the mud room.

I love the color arsenic.

And so taking that and pulling it up

on the ceiling, which is not what everyone would do,

but we love it.

Welcome to the north corner of the octagon,

also known as the kitchen.

We thought about originally, like putting a kitchen over here

somewhere inside the space.

But we decided you didn't want to mess around

with the beauty of the octagon.

Cabinetry is a big part of what

goes in and makes the kitchen.

And so we had been eager and hoping we

would find a local partner.

But in the end, it was an English design studio

that was the right fit and had them guide us and be a thought

partner on what would work in this space, what kind of color

choices, which felt great.