In 2003, Heide Hendricks and Rafe Churchill, principals of the architecture and design firm Hendricks Churchill who are also married to one another, first set eyes on what would become Ellsworth, their family home in Litchfield County, Connecticut.

It would take another 15 years of driving past the 1871 farmhouse and “dreaming of the possibilities but never imagining it might one day be theirs,” as described in the introduction to their new book Our Way Home: Reimagining An American Farmhouse, out September 5, for the couple to buy it.

Our Way Home: Reimagining an American Farmhouse

Our Way Home: Reimagining an American Farmhouse

During that time, Hendricks and Churchill had also added to their family, renovated three other homes, and built a successful design business upon the foundation of their authentic, warm, and subtly playful style and collaborative, unpretentious approach. That period of growth perfectly primed them to create their dream home at Ellsworth, which they have documented in beautiful and remarkably personal detail in their new book.

More From Veranda

play iconThe triangle icon that indicates to play

Heide Hendricks and Rafe Churchill

Chris Mottalini

Today, the house presents itself as a sanctuary of self-expression, yielding at appropriate moments to history and setting. Many of the rooms, furnished with an intentionally timeless mix of antiques and contemporary pieces, are cloaked in wallpapers that echo the environment and framed by painted millwork that accentuates rather than obscures existing eccentricities. There’s an undercurrent of excitement about the potential for discovery to the spaces, the style of which is certainly not for everyone.

Which may be precisely the point.

A tree-of-life pattern from Claremont dresses the walls and doors in den, which is where Hendricks and Churchill watch movies.Chris Mottalini

Hendricks’s and Churchill’s story of Ellsworth is compelling not just for its beauty, but also for its deeply personal reflection on making a house a family home. It’s a story over twenty years in the making and highly specific to their needs, desires and dreams. And while a 19th-century house in rural Connecticut with quirky trim may not appeal to all, the yearning for crafting our own havens, our own sanctuaries of self-expression, surely does—especially if we allow ourselves time and space to reflect on what we really want.

In the algorithm-driven world in which we live, self-discovery of any kind has become harder and harder. Our own voices are perilously drowned out as we are inundated by streams of sameness, particularly on social media but increasingly on other platforms as well.

Specific to residential design, the so-called “modern farmhouse” style is perhaps the most egregious offender, with its white siding, black windows and sea of subway tile and Shaker cabinetry popping up everywhere, from Pinterest to the Presidio (could there be anywhere less agrarian than San Francisco?).

As real estate reporter Ronda Kaysen wrote in her thoughtful article in The New York Times, “The modern farmhouse is the millennial answer to the baby boomer McMansion….dominating renovations, new construction and subdivisions in communities with no connection to farming.”

Algorithms and the ensuing influencer-dominated echo chambers in which we now exist have not only given rise to design ubiquity but also stoked the instant gratification fire of American consumerism. When we’re honest with ourselves, all of us can acknowledge having experienced the following internal dialogue: “So-and-so is everywhere, and I simply must have it—NOW.”

Churchill, Hendricks, and their two children on the porch

Christ Mottalini

Of course, nothing about creating a home is instant—or needs to look the same for me as it does for my neighbors. Homes are repositories of memories and moments that comfort us with so much more than shelter, and they take decades, sometimes lifetimes, to cultivate. Further, what makes American neighborhoods, towns, cities, and even rural communities rich with culture and interest is the idiosyncrasies among us—and our opportunity to share them with each other.

Perhaps it’s fitting, then, to look to a pair of artists with “a shared appreciation for Yankee ingenuity, the value of artisan craft, and for freedom from convention,” as described in the introduction to Our Way Home, for a remedy to the ills of design homogeneity sweeping across America. Here, five ideas from the story of Hendricks’s and Churchill’s home for curing the modern farmhouse epidemic.

Start a reno by making a list of what you don’t want to change.

Call it the “first, do no harm” approach to renovation. Henricks and Churchill mapped out their plans for Ellsworth by considering what they didn’t want to amend about the 19th-century house, which needed quite a bit of work to bring it to current living standards. “We definitely considered how our family would live in this house, but first we outlined for ourselves what not to do,” Churchill says.

For example, they decided upfront they would not enlarge the 2,900-square-foot house, and even lopped off a small shed from the side of the house that had been used as an outhouse. “The history is important to us, but most significant is how the house and immediate landscape influence each other, resulting in a beautifully respectful partnership,” he adds.

Inside, the design duo navigated a delicate balance of updating the house for 21st century family life while “making occasional sacrifices in honor of the bones of the house,” says Churchill. “Our most successful projects are those that keep the egos in check while learning how to live with an old house.”

Hendricks and Churchill widened the opening from the center hall to the living room and added bookcases on either side.

Christ Mottalini

Keep the character, skip the extra bathroom.

Among the bones of the house that Hendricks and Churchill decided to honor is a narrow, steep back staircase that drops from the second story bedrooms into the kitchen—the kind of thing that is “usually removed in favor of adding more storage space or an additional bathroom,” the book states. “We kept this quirky detail because it really adds character to the kitchen. It’s what makes an old house an old house,” says Hendricks.

Leaving the stairs in place meant they had to forgo adding a third full bath, which “would have would have been nice, but keeping up with two and a half is really enough,” Churchill says. “We figured that if you’re staying with us, you must be a good friend and will accept that sharing a bathroom with our kids is just part of the experience.”

The couple also left in place a few imperfect millwork details that had had been added over the years, such as scrollwork applied on the front hall’s exposed stair stringer. “You can’t help but think about the person who made it and what was going through their head at the time,” says Hendricks. “These kinds of details let the imagination run wild — whether the stories we come up with about them are true or not.”

After cladding the living room walls in a pine wallpaper by Fayce Textiles, Hendricks recently came back and added the wallwovering to the ceiling to create a cozy envelope.Chris Mottalini

Choose room colors that make you feel good.

Another element Hendricks and Churchill did not scrap was the house’s existing floor plan, preserving its center hall orientation with rooms assigned distinct functions rather than bringing down walls to create an open plan. Despite many discovering with the perils of open plan living during the pandemic, the layout persists in modern farmhouses, which often feature “great rooms” designed for cooking, eating, living, working, and even exercise and are typically colorless. Whatever convenience or togetherness is gained from such a design comes at a cost: Lost is the opportunity to experience change in light and variety in color and view, all of which affects mood.

When designing the interiors at Ellsworth, Hendricks spent a lot of time thinking through when rooms would be used, during what seasons, and how light changed each to inform her color selections long before she made any decisions about furniture. For example, because the living room has the only fireplace in the house, Hendricks knew her family would use it most often during winter and thus chose a darker, moodier palette of greens, reds, and aubergine for coziness, and because they would look “even better by firelight.”

Hendricks also chose a darker scheme for the mudroom—in this case a purple-gray. “Using dark colors in an entry is a great strategy to adjust your eye from the outside. When you enter the mudroom on a bright day, your eyes immediately begin adjusting to the interior space. It sets a tone, and the next room you walk into automatically feels bigger and brighter,” she says. “Conversely, the [nearby] laundry room is a bright yellow. It’s a happy yellow for a dreary task.”

Allow your home to evolve alongside with you.

Soulful homes, like their owners, are works in progress—not altars of instant gratification. Some of the most beautiful moments at Ellsworth are the result of tinkering and tweaking over time. Take the color scheme in the kitchen and its adjacent pantry—a pastiche of light, medium, and indigo blues—which is the result of a disagreement between Hendricks and Churchill that took years to resolve.

Hendricks chose Farrow & Ball’s De Nimes blue for the cabinets and beadboard, even knowing that blue is said to be an appetite suppressant, and a lighter Farrow & Ball shade, Borrowed Light, for the pantry. A few years in, Hendricks felt the kitchen to be too utilitarian in feel and Churchill complained the pantry color felt cold. To soften the kitchen, Henricks added a floral block print wallpaper (Soane’s Dianthus Chintz) on the small wall spaces not covered in beadboard.

The pantry solution took a little more negotiation, creativity, and time. “Rafe wanted me to consider changing the color, but I still really liked it. So we came up with the idea to take the darker blue from the kitchen and ‘spill’ it in the pantry as if it came in from a flood and left behind a waterline. That was Rafe’s analogy when he was trying to sell me on the idea. And he did. It was a good collaborative moment.” Now, the room stands as a testament to the art of compromise and the beauty that comes from waiting for the best idea to bloom.

Where windows or doors had to be replaced, the couple replicated existing millwork—even those that felt too “big or even clumsy but…really give the house its character,” says Churchill.

Chris Mottalini

Fill your home with things that bring you joy.

Designed with color, pattern, furniture, and artwork meaningful to Hendricks and Churchill, Ellsworth is an original reflection of its owners. It’s clear that while they were thoughtful and studious in their approach, the couple was never consumed by trends, resale, or even “correctness.” Instead, they made design decisions that reflect what they love and value. The rooms in turn invite guests and friends to learn their story and get to know them even better.

It was deeply important to the couple, for example, to pay homage to the surrounding landscape inside, so Hendricks chose wallpapers that relate to the property. Mark Hearld’s Harvest Hare wallpaper in the dining room echoes the hares in the surrounding fields, while Marthe Armitage’s Chestnut wallpaper in the powder room is a nod to a Japanese chestnut tree in the front yard. A pine wallpaper by Fayce Textiles in the living room honors some white pines that had to come down to protect the house.

Hendricks furnished the house with a lively mix of antiques and vintage pieces, old hand-knotted rugs, and contemporary elements like lighting fixtures and art—which together engage in a friendly banter-like dialogue, never too serious.

“Whether it’s a bespoke piece crafted by some artisanal studio or a mass-produced object, it has to convey a message, preferably a humorous one, or provoke an emotion,” says Hendricks about selecting pieces for her home. “I like to imagine when I’m designing and furnishing these spaces that I’m making my mark in time — even after we’re gone, those pieces will tell the story of our time in the home.”

Editor in Chief, VERANDA

Steele Marcoux is the Editor in Chief at VERANDA, covering design trends, architecture, and travel for the brand.

The post This New Design Guide Gives a Remedy for the Fashionable Farmhouse Epidemic appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

The world is filled with empty office space while workers fight for scarce and expensive housing. Why not solve both problems by converting the vacant offices into apartments?

Experts told me some office buildings could be converted into luxury condos.

Larger office buildings with a central elevator shaft, on the other hand, can hardly be economically converted into residential buildings. Grants may be required for conversions from office to affordable housing.

While this problem is resolved, investors should examine bullish bets on home builders and bearish bets on office building owners who are increasingly returning their keys to banks.

Too much office space

The pandemic has had a devastating impact on office building occupancy rates.

Employees do not commute to the office five days a week. According to Kastle Systems, which tracks security thefts in office buildings, the nationwide office return rate is actually 50% of pre-pandemic levels. Despite management’s best efforts, workers will likely continue to work from home and occasionally visit an office.

There is more office space than corporate landlords need, and they have billions to pay back — some even returning the keys to the lender. So much:

• Vacancy rate: 18.6%. According to Cushman & Wakefield, the average US office vacancy rate was 18.6% in the first quarter of 2023, up 5.9 percentage points from the last quarter of 2019. C&W estimates that by 2030, 330 million square feet of US office space could be obsolete.
• vacancies increase. Bloomberg estimates that more than 17% of US office supply is vacant and 4.3% is available for subletting. While these averages hide the wide disparities across the country — according to the Wall Street Journal, vacancy rates in San Francisco top at nearly 25% and in Silicon Valley at 17% (and counting) — C&W believes that the number of vacant office spaces will continue to increase until the second half of 2023.
• Billions in debt for landlords are due. The Mortgage Bankers Association estimates that office building debt of $92 billion will mature in 2023 and another $58 billion in 2024, according to Bloomberg.
• Some landlords return the keys to lenders. According to Bloomberg, a PIMCO-owned landlord has defaulted on its debts for seven office buildings in San Francisco, New York City, Boston and Jersey City. In February, Canadian asset manager Brookfield “pulled out of two prime Los Angeles office buildings after $784 million in loans defaulted.” according to fDi Intelligence. According to CNN, Mark Rose, CEO of global real estate consultancy Avison Young, has never seen such a high level of office returns.

In January, people working from home hurt New York’s economy. Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor at Columbia Business School, told the New York TimesNYT, “On an average weekday, nearly half of New York workers stay away from the office; on Mondays and Fridays the proportion is even higher. The number of subway and bus passengers has fallen by a third compared to pre-pandemic levels. Serious crime increased more than 20 percent last year, and more than 300,000 people fled the city in the first year of the pandemic, generating total income of more than $21 billion. If office value decreases in proportion to usage, the city’s property tax revenue will decrease by $5 billion per year.”

Too little living space

At the same time, there is not enough housing for all but the wealthiest people. The housing shortage keeps real estate prices high – unaffordable for most people. Despite the high mortgage interest rates, housing starts are increasing rapidly. It remains unclear whether this will create enough affordable housing to meet demand.

Here are indications of housing shortages and efforts to meet demand:

• Millions too few housing units. According to Axios, Freddie Mac estimates that the US is short of about 3.8 million housing units – both for rent and for sale. There are 142 million housing units in the US, the Wall Street Journal reported.
• Average house prices have increased by 40% since January 2020. The average home price is $419,103 — although down 3.1% over the past year, according to RedfinRDFN — 40% higher than in January 2020. Contributing to the high price is a 39% drop in homes for sale since 2018 at, so Redfin reported.
• Housing starts increased by 21.7% in May. New home construction in the US surged 21.7% in May as homebuilders began work on single-family homes to meet strong buyer demand. MarketWatch reported that housing starts rose to 1.63 million a year last month from 1.34 million in April.

Builders are optimistic about the housing market. Richard Moody, senior vice president and chief economist at Regions FinancialRF Corporation, wrote in a note, “To say we didn’t expect that wouldn’t even come close to reflecting the extent to which May’s housing data surprised us.”

Challenges in converting office space into living space

Will property developers close the gap between supply and demand? Or could all that excess office space be converted into housing?

The short answer is that office remodeling is most likely to meet the demand of those looking for luxury housing rather than affordable housing. In addition to changing zoning restrictions to allow for office to residential conversions, here are the most common reasons why it is difficult to convert existing office space to residential:

• Technical obstacles. “The large floor slabs of many commercial office buildings built in the late 20th century pose challenges for conversions, including limited access to daylight in most of the interior space on each floor (which is a violation of most housing codes),” says Justin Steil, an associate professor at MIT law and urban planning, wrote in a June 20 email.
• The sanitary facilities need to be modernized. Although some cities like Portland, Oregon, Washington, DC and Chicago are streamlining permitting processes and facilitating remodeling, office buildings require more water and sewer lines to accommodate one or more bathrooms per dwelling unit, rather than one or two bathrooms per floor in a typical office building, noted Steep.
• Due to the significant cost of office remodeling, apartment prices must be high. The cost of these retrofits is so high that they make the most financial sense in cities with high rents. “The retrofit will cost $200 to $300 per square foot. For this to make sense, either the building has to be cheap or the resulting apartments have to be expensive. High-rent cities like Manhattan, San Francisco and Boston are seeing luxury apartment conversions happening,” said Joseph Gyourko, a professor at the Wharton School, in a June 21 interview.
• The conversion of affordable housing can only succeed with state help. Without “additional municipal measures”, the conversion of office buildings will not solve the problem of affordable housing, said Steil. Such a measure could mean the waiver of tax documents during the conversion process. “Cities won’t pay real estate taxes for two years until people live in the apartments,” Kosta Ligris, an associate professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, told me in a June 21 interview.
• Many office buildings will not make it. “The really good buildings will be fine. The older ones are difficult to retrofit. Working from home will average one day a week, which will reduce demand by 20%. There will be quite a few buildings that don’t make it. I don’t see any conversions for the middle class. There will be a large number of landlords returning the keys. What happens to the regional banks that loaned them the $40-50 million?” Ligris closed.

Van Nieuwerburgh is optimistic that government-subsidized construction of new downtown housing and conversion of commercial buildings into apartments can help Manhattan. “Best case scenario, we’ll remove 30 or 40 percent of the office stock in New York City and turn it into beautiful living space. New York City has all these great amenities, it’s a wonderful place that young people want to live, regardless of where they work,” he told the Times.

What Investors Should Do

Investors should consider bullish bets on homebuilders who will benefit from meeting demand for housing, while at the same time betting against office landlords and banks who are lending to them.

Homebuilders worth evaluating include KBHome, PulteGroupPHM and LennarLEN – which are at or near all-time highs. Investors should consider whether these stocks could continue to climb.

Office landlords that could suffer include Brookfield Corp — which has lost nearly half its value since its November 2021 peak. Investors should assess the future creditworthiness of such companies.

Banks I wrote about in April that could be exposed include Valley National, East West Bank and Synovus Financial. Investors should consider whether they should expect higher loan defaults.

follow me Twitter or LinkedIn. Cash my website or some of my other work here.

In 1994 I gave up Corporate America and founded a management consulting and venture capital firm (http://petercohan.com). I started tracking stocks in 1981 while I was still in graduate school at MIT and first analyzed technology stocks in 1998 as a guest on CNBC. In April 2011, I became a Forbes contributor. My 15th book – published in November 2020 – is “Goliath”. Strike Back: How Traditional Retailers Are Winning Back Customers From Ecommerce Startups. I was featured in the 2016 documentary We The People: The Market Basket Effect eight times. (http://www.themarketbasketeffect.com/). I also teach business strategy and entrepreneurship at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. (http://www.babson.edu/Academics/faculty/profiles/Pages/Cohan-Peter.aspx)

Continue readingread less

The post 330 Million Sq. Toes In Vacant Workplace Area Gained’t Treatment Housing Scarcity appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

For most people, having a hangover after a night of drinking is a couple of painful hours that you don’t want to remember. But it became a career for a man to find a cure for the hangover.

Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall began a decade-long search and traveled to over 35 countries to find a cure for the hangover. He wasn’t just pounding Advil or chugging Pedialyte. Bishop-Stall, a journalist, has put in extreme efforts – from jumping off the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas (the resulting adrenaline rush, he says, blew the hangover right out of it) to diving into cold glacial water (in which a response to the fight to escape had sobering effects – and consulted dozens of experts in various fields to find a remedy, resulting in his new book, Hungover: The Morning After and One Man’s Quest for a Cure.

While dehydration is commonly believed to be the leading cause of a hangover – which is often accompanied by severe headaches, nausea, and tremors – Bishop-Stall says it is a little more complicated.

“If the problem was dehydration, you could wake up the next morning and drink a pint of water and you’ll be fine. But that doesn’t really seem to be happening,” Bishop-Stall told CNBC Make It. “That’s because There are other underlying things that are causing the dehydration … all of the cells in your body are inflamed, and they are inflamed due to the response of your body’s immune system. Such a big hangover is your body’s immune system going into high gear. “

Bishop-Stall came up with a very special blend of vitamins and supplements that cures hangovers (more on that later), but he also says he came across some simple things you can do to help.

Eat eggs for breakfast the next morning, he says. Eggs contain an amino acid called n-acetyl-l-cysteine, which, according to Bishop-Stall, comes so close to a “magical ingredient” he could find for a hangover cure. The amino acid cysteine ​​in eggs can help break down acetaldehyde, which is a by-product of alcohol.

“If you look through almost every culture, eggs for breakfast seem to have been a common thing for thousands of years, right down to an American bacon and egg breakfast or a proper British roast or whatever you have,” he points out.

Order your eggs with a side of cabbage, another food Bishop-Stall recommends for hangovers.

“There have been recipes, songs, and poems about cabbage that go back hundreds if not thousands of years and refer to the morning after it was cooked,” says Bishop-Stall. “And it turns out that cabbage has what is known as a ‘chelating effect,’ which means that it gets into the body and clings to toxins and pulls it out when it leaves your body.”

In his search, Bischof-Stall also explored what he calls “the old Victorian chimney sweep method”. In Victorian England, he explains, chimney sweeps made money on vacation selling extra soot from chimneys. People mixed the soot with a hot cup of milk before drinking to help with hangovers.

While this may seem unsavory, Bishop-Stall notes that charcoal tablets are used today to filter toxins out of the body.

CNBC Make It led Bishop-Stall’s suggestions from Dr. Tania Elliott of NYU Langone Hospital in New York City. While Elliott says that eating eggs can help break down acetaldehyde, and that eating cabbage could help absorb alcohol, she says that charcoal pills won’t help with a hangover.

“Charcoal tablets are used for acute alcohol intoxication, in order to absorb alcohol from the stomach during alcohol intoxication,” says Elliott. “However, it wouldn’t matter in a hangover where alcohol has already been absorbed into the bloodstream and broken down.”

What is Bishop-Stall’s formula for a hangover cure? In his book, he suggests taking the following dietary supplements after drinking and before bed: n-acetylcysteine ​​(NAC); Frankincense (Boswellia); Milk thistle; and vitamins B1, B6 and B12.

“Once you fall asleep and the hangover mechanism starts, it’s practically impossible to stop and you don’t necessarily want to stop it,” he says, “because it’s primarily an immune system response.”

For her part, Elliott says there is scattered evidence that NAC and frankincense can help relieve hangover symptoms, but there is no evidence that milk thistle, B1, B6, and B12 will help.

Also, says Elliott, “remember that herbal supplements are not regulated by the FDA and can contain harmful contaminants,” she says of Bishop Stall’s preparation. “In terms of vitamins, it is better to eat these nutrients than in pill form.”

To help out with a hangover, Elliott recommends moisturizing and eating before drinking. “Eating in the stomach helps slow down alcohol consumption,” she says.

Do not miss: People are crazy about these juicy baked goods

Do you like this story? How CNBC Make It on Facebook!

The post The way to treatment a hangover appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.