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Photographer Douglas Friedman welcomes Architectural Digest inside his beautifully restored Long Island home, redesigned with acclaimed interior designer Steven Gambrel. From the dramatic dark kitchen and custom interiors to collectible contemporary art and cozy lime-washed bedrooms, every room blends warmth, luxury, and personality. Outside, Martha Stewart designed the elegant, low-maintenance gardens filled with roses, hydrangeas, and boxwoods.
Transcript
00:05Hello, A.D. I'm Douglas Friedman, and welcome to my home.
00:09Come on in, I'll give you a tour.
00:22This is the most incredible room in the house,
00:25and I think one of the most incredible rooms
00:27that Steven Gambrill has ever designed.
00:30This is the sunroom, it's the kitchen,
00:33it's the heart of the home.
00:35The original structure that was here
00:36was the same footprint, it was a little lower,
00:39it was also a sunroom, but it felt cramped and dark.
00:42So we redesigned it and rebuilt it,
00:45stronger and bigger and brighter.
00:47It's wrapped in Marvin windows,
00:50and as you can see, it gets the most incredible light.
00:53And then Steven convinced me to do a dark kitchen,
00:57a dark gray paneled kitchen,
00:59and we worked closely with a lovely gentleman named Mamuka
01:03at TBS Kitchens in Santa Ana, California.
01:08All of the lighting in the house came from Urban Electric,
01:11like these incredible sconces and these hanging pendants.
01:14These, however, are antiques, and Steven found them in London.
01:18When we were laying out the kitchen,
01:20I thought it would be really great to have a banquette.
01:23And then I thought it would be really great to have a banquette
01:25that wrapped around the entire back of the kitchen,
01:28almost creating a restaurant or cafe-like atmosphere.
01:32This is my favorite spot in the house.
01:34This is where you will always...
01:35Actually, my favorite spot in the house,
01:37that's the captain's seat, is right here.
01:39I can sit and I could, like, look out over the yard.
01:42I can see my friends. I can see the dogs.
01:45I can watch everything happen.
01:47I can even look at these eggs
01:48that my friend Martha Stewart sent over this morning.
01:52So about three years ago when I bought this house,
01:55my best friend, Steven Gambrill,
01:57came by to see what I had done, what I had purchased,
02:00and he walked in and he goes,
02:02Oh my God, Dee, this is incredible.
02:04I really want to do this house.
02:06Like, this is a Steven Gambrill home.
02:08When you look at it, you know it's Steven's work.
02:10And I thought, being a friend,
02:12and somebody who's known me for 30 years,
02:14that he would just be like,
02:15Yeah, yeah, no problem. Do it your way.
02:17It's great. I completely trust you.
02:18Which I did, honestly.
02:20He ended up being the most challenging client.
02:23I don't think I was.
02:25Which goes to show that every client should be opinionated,
02:28and it makes the project better.
02:31This is the mudroom of the house,
02:34which is the de facto main entrance to the house.
02:37Originally, this was a forgotten back bedroom.
02:42So we decided to cut a doorway in,
02:45add a staircase to the basement,
02:47and then this turned into the mudroom.
02:49I worked with Tony Minetti at Ancient Surfaces,
02:52who stores these incredible stone floors.
02:53They were reclaimed from somewhere in Italy,
02:56and shipped over in these very heavy crates.
02:59This is the snug room.
03:01It's the room where you watch television.
03:03I don't watch a lot of television,
03:05but I'm going to try to start watching a lot of television in here.
03:08It's a really comfortable custom sofa that Steven designed.
03:11A great chair for my friends at Oslo in Los Angeles.
03:15It's a custom fabric.
03:16I think it's mohair.
03:17It's kind of great.
03:17And this beautiful piece by Tom Sachs.
03:20I don't think you can sit in it,
03:22but it sure looks good in that corner.
03:26So, Eddie, this is the dining room of the house,
03:28which was actually the kitchen of the house,
03:31but then Steven Gamble kind of reimagined it
03:33as more of a centerpiece.
03:35This table is by Tom Dixon, and it's brass.
03:39I got it as an antique.
03:41Maybe it's 14 years old,
03:42so it has this incredible patina to it.
03:45All of the light fixtures in the house are from Urban Electric,
03:47most of which were designed by Steven Gamble for Urban Electric.
03:51These two are actually some of my favorites.
03:53This one and the one that's up in the stairwell.
03:57And if you look over here,
03:58I worked very closely with a Mexican artist called Mike Diaz,
04:03and I think you'll find some of Mike's pieces
04:05in every room of the house.
04:07I'm just obsessed with what he creates.
04:09I actually commissioned an artist to do portraits of my dogs,
04:13Louise and Hey Sailor.
04:17So they're kind of always with me,
04:18even though my parents took them from me about 10 years ago,
04:21because I was working so much.
04:27This room was actually behind the original refrigerator
04:30and was used as a pantry.
04:32And then we reimagined it as the Lobmire bar.
04:36So Steven Gamble had a purple,
04:39an aubergine purple room in this house in Sag Harbor.
04:43And that was the inspiration for the color of the wet bar here at the house.
04:51This house never had a powder room.
04:53So we carved a powder room out of the old breakfast nook.
04:57And Steven decided to paint it red, asking me,
05:02and I think it's beautiful.
05:03And then he commissioned this artist,
05:05actually got her out of retirement,
05:07to make this beautiful marbleized paper
05:10that wraps the entire room in a leather, antique leather mirror.
05:15It falls into this room so beautifully.
05:19The color is just remarkable with this red trim.
05:25This is the living room of the house,
05:27and it has incredibly low, intimate ceilings.
05:31I think this room really kind of hugs you
05:33and makes you feel secure and warm.
05:36I can't wait to start a fire here in the wintertime.
05:40I worked closely with a lot of artists and makers
05:43to find furniture pieces that were unique, one-offs,
05:47things that couldn't be duplicated.
05:48Steven even created a lot of custom pieces for the house,
05:51and I just couldn't say no to this beautiful green leather chair.
05:56Steven bent the staircase into the dining room,
05:59which meant completely rebuilding the staircase.
06:02A lot more work than I assumed.
06:04And it also became a great spot for art.
06:06Just some random pieces I've collected over the years.
06:09But one of the more exciting pieces in the house
06:12is this guy right here, this little aperture in the wall.
06:16We actually built this staircase around this art piece,
06:20which is behind the wall.
06:22His name is Patrick Jacobs.
06:23Patrick went to Marfa, Texas,
06:25and he built a portal to my home there through this piece of art.
06:31Let's go upstairs and see all the bedrooms.
06:38Okay, so this was the saddest room in the house.
06:41It was the most uninspired.
06:43And so last week we lime washed it.
06:46This beautiful, beautiful, cozy color called dirt,
06:49which is also from my collection with Color Atelier.
06:52And this room is also full of some really incredible pieces.
06:55These amazing, amazing spiked lamps from Mike Diaz.
07:00God, this room is like a cocoon you never want to leave.
07:03And if you're lucky enough to sleep here,
07:04you get a fireplace and you get this beautiful collection of art.
07:08We're in the second guest bedroom now,
07:10which originally was a light gray and it was very beautiful.
07:15I think it must have been October of last year.
07:17And the tree right outside the window was bright red with its leaves
07:21and the sun was reflecting off those leaves
07:23and bouncing the most beautiful pink light into this room.
07:26And I called Steven.
07:28I was like, we've got to paint this room some incredible shade of pink.
07:32And we came up with a color called Rabbit Tongue,
07:35which is also part of my collection with Color Atelier.
07:41This area of the house was one of the more incredible renovation projects.
07:47Steven completely blew up the old layout up here
07:50and then reimagined it as a really kind of gracious primary suite.
07:56This is the primary bathroom with the most incredible reclaimed floor from ancient surfaces.
08:02Tony Minetti is really, really kind and found the most beautiful things for this house.
08:07All the bathroom tiles are from McIntyre Tile.
08:10They're all handmade by the most incredible artists in Northern California.
08:15And then, of course, there's that really magical toilet from Kohler.
08:20Can you believe this used to be the primary bathroom?
08:23Such an awkward use of a really beautiful space.
08:26So when we came in, we added windows, we built out this dormer,
08:31we painted the whole room in this incredible lime wash.
08:35And it's become like my sanctuary now.
08:38I can be up here, away from my friends when they're wreaking havoc downstairs,
08:43and get some rest.
08:46And now we're in the backyard of the house with really incredible landscaping
08:50designed by my friend Martha Stewart.
08:52She understands that I lead a very active, challenging life,
08:55lots of travel, very little time to use my green thumb.
08:59So she designed a house with lots of boxwoods, lots of roses, and lots of hydrangeas.
09:06Really simple upkeep.
09:07I was so excited when Douglas Friedman bought that charming wreck of a house in Long Island.
09:15I was glad that he was going to be a closer neighbor.
09:17And I looked around the grounds, and I thought,
09:20ah, I could really help him with this landscape.
09:24Simple, elegant, low maintenance.
09:28Not like Douglas, he's high maintenance, you know that.
09:32But I thought everything else he could handle.
09:35And the house turned out gloriously, as did Walensky.
09:41And then over here is an outdoor dining table designed by my friends at McKinnon and Harris.
09:47It's really beautiful stuff, incredibly well made by some brilliant artisans and craftsmen here in America.
09:58One of my favorite things about the backyard is that I'm starting to build a small sculpture collection back here.
10:04There's this piece by Wendy Vanderbilt Lehman.
10:07Actually, I grew up with this piece at her house because I was friends with her daughters.
10:11And it's kind of remarkable to me that it's wound up here.
10:14And then tucked back in this corner, these two guys made it back from Marfa, Texas.
10:19And it was not easy to get them here.
10:21It's by an artist called Brett Douglas Hunter, just outside of Nashville, Tennessee.
10:26You might have to censor these bits.
10:37Thank you for spending your time with me.
10:38Thank you for taking a look inside my home.
10:40I'm late, I've got a flight to catch.
10:42See ya.
10:45This is where I've changed my home byopp otras.
10:46I'm late, and I'll take this road around.
10:46I'm late for you.Sim".
10:50This is
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