Having a dinner party in a new house feels like the final step to making a house really feel like a home. We have our lovely friends Maleka, Molly and Barclay visiting right now. Barclay happens to be a phenomenal chef, so having him christen the kitchen has been such a treat! We went to the fish market yesterday morning and got two huge lobsters and a gorgeous dorado. Barclay showed us how to prepare the lobsters, which involved a drill and lots of laughing, and made the most incredible lobster risotto, baked dorado, and a lobster grapefruit salad. Our friends Kelly and Jordan just got married on St Barts, so they joined the feast as well. Here are a few pics…

Yesterday, the long awaited couch, bed and side tables came… finally!!! What a difference these few pieces made in finally making the house feel like a home. More photos of all the furnishings coming soon, but in the mean time, here’s Bugaboo dying to jump on the new white couch with his sandy paws.

and an evening shot of the bedroom… i’m so in love with these lights!

We arrived on the island October 26th and spent the week living in a chaotic construction zone, working 15 hour days to try to get the house done for our first guests who arrived October 31st. It came down to the wire, but we finished it! It was exhausting but incredibly rewarding to see the things I had dreamed up in my head spring to life. It was also a bit of a relief to see that everything I chose was working well together… when you pick things out online, or from catalogues and samples, it’s always a bit of a gamble. The kitchen was completed Friday, which we LOVE, along with the final painting and electrical. We’re now waiting on furniture which should arrive at the end of this week. We’ll still be finalizing details over the next few weeks, but it’s finally livable and very comfortable. We love the flow of the spaces and overall vibe. I will be posting many more photos once the furniture arrives, but in the mean time here are some iphone photos of the house now, and what it looked like just a few days ago.

Currently:

5 Days ago:

Here are a few images our plaster applicator just sent showing the progress of the walls and floor. Though it still looks like a messy construction zone, I’m really happy with how the plaster is turning out. I can tell from the photo that it has a gorgeous texture and the way it bounces light is beautiful (why we went with Italian lime plaster in the first place). Of course this week has been very, very humid in St Barts, making the dry times on the plaster a nightmare!

We flew the plaster applicator in from Miami since he’s one of the very few people in North America who can apply true Italian Lime Plaster and Tadelakt. Venetian plaster is a common finish in the US, but in my opinion it has a plastic look. Tadelakt, or Italian Lime plaster has a unique texture that makes you want to reach out and touch it. When you are in spaces that have this finish on the walls, it’s almost as if the room is hugging you. I was first exposed to it in Greece. It’s commonly seen throughout Europe and Morocco but rare in the US, though I’m starting to see it pop up more and more on design blogs. If you like clean lines and a minimalist, organic look, it’s a perfect finish.

The image on the right is of the kitchen. The floor currently has two coats of the base, and the final coat will look much like the walls in the photo on the right. Once the floor is complete, the kitchen will be installed covering up all the ugly parts you currently see in the photo. You can barely see a hint of the beautiful new white wood paneling in that image.

The image on the left is of the small bedroom. The ugly A/C unit will be getting covered up. Just below is the AC unit is a built in headboard which we covered with plaster. We will also be building in a king bed here, as soon as the plaster dries. While this room is small, it’s a space I’m really excited for. It’s going to be very cozy, but minimal and clean. It has big sliding glass doors that open onto the deck and if you leave them open at night you can fall asleep to the sound of the waves.

At the end of September, my mom and I had the great pleasure of going to France to attend a two day cooking workshop with Mimi Thorisson. We had been following her beautiful blog and drooling over her recipes (and her life) for a long time. It was a dream come true to finally meet her, to cook in her house, and to share the experience with my mom. Mimi and her husband Oddur live in a very small town near Medoc called St. Yzans with their many kids and many dogs. The workshop was held in their house, which was beautiful and so quintessentially French. Everywhere you looked there were small details that made the space feel both welcoming and incredibly special. Curated objects, like candles from Buly in Paris, straw sun hats, leather aprons, baskets of shallots, crystal decanters of scotch, copper pots, and original ceramic tiles were placed throughout the house, playing the roles of both beauty and function. The textures and colors wove together seamlessly creating a magical and very inspiring space to cook, eat and drink. Here are a few images from our two days in Mimi’s french kitchen…

I’ve just left St Barts after a productive and quick five day stay to check in on the remodel. Things are moving along great and our exterior is finished! I still want to add some small details that bring the space to life (candles, turkish towels, potted bougainvillea) but that will come together when we return in the end of October. The ipe wood is also very new, I look forward to when it fades to a beautiful grey to match the older ipe. That will probably take about 6 months to a year. We will be back to STAY on the island for a month starting in the end of October and we’re brining our little pup Bugaboo over! It’s going to be quite the adventure for all of us and I’m not sure how Bugaboo and the giant iguanas that live in the gardens around the house will mix…

 

Here are a few before shots of the current mess that is the interior of the house. The old kitchen has been ripped off, the interior walls/doors are about to be ripped out, and there is dust everywhere! They are waiting for me to leave before they start the major demo because I’m currently staying here. As soon as I leave the real work begins.

So far, we haven’t had too many unpleasant surprises as you usually do in remodels. The only one that came up was the shower floor and walls. We had always intended to replace the shower floor because the existing wood one was not draining well. However, when we ripped it up we discovered the roots of a palm tree that had established residency and taken over. The wood behind the tile was also rotten so unfortunately that all has to get ripped out and re-done.

We are resurfacing both the master bathroom and second bathroom in a beautiful Italian Lime Plaster. This plaster is commonly seen in Italy, Greece and Morocco, however it’s pretty rare in the US. It was hard for me to find someone who worked with the product in the US, but I did find a company out of Miami and they are coming next week to plaster the bathrooms, the second bedroom and kitchen floor.

These were my inspiration photos for the plaster:

 

Surfing in the Caribbean is elusive and inconsistent, but when it happens, it’s a wonderful thing! To be surfing in perfectly tempered, crystal clear turquoise water with virtually NO ONE else on the wave is a rare and precious thing in today’s world. I arrived on the island a couple of days ago via a direct flight from Paris (LONG!). This swell showed up the next day and the few locals who surf were loving it. I shot the above image at Lorient Beach, one of three surfing beaches on St Barth. The waves have since died a bit, but the wind has come up providing a much needed reprieve from the heat.

These are not great images, (shot with my iphone at dusk), but they do show progress of the new deck! The pool/deck area used to have a covered part that was done in ipe wood, which we loved and kept. We wanted to continue the ipe out to surround the entire pool and create a walkway on both sides out to the far deck. Previously there was no walkway, making it very awkward to get out to the far deck. You can see the work in progress in these images, the face/front piece of trim has yet to be put on, but all the boards have been laid! We are also installing an outdoor shower with both hot and cold water that sits in a little grove of palms. Ipè is a hard wood that feels so lovely on the feet and holds up incredibly well in tropical climates. It has a very clean, simple look to it and turns a beautiful shade of grey in about six months time.

Every morning around 6:30am, the local fishermen pull up their boats to the entrance of the Gustavia harbor and drop off their morning’s catch. It’s a small building with a faded painted sign that reads, “poisson” in block letters. The average passerby would never even know it’s there. I had read stories online from a few people who said that if you want fresh fish in St Barts, this was the place to go. You had to get there before 8am or the fish would all be gone. It’s where the restaurants source their fish daily, and I was set on doing the same! It was everything I could have hoped for and more. The small hut is on the water and they have a couple of big cement tubs where the fish are kept cool in ice. You pick what you’d like from their selections – dorado, tuna, poisson rouge. I selected a beautiful small dorado that they cleaned and filleted. It was 9 euro for a fish that would have easily fed six people. I cooked it for dinner tonight by pan searing it in butter, garlic, lemon, salt and pepper. I made a small side of rice and it was one of the best meals I’ve ever had in my life. Oh how I love the simplicity of island living!