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If you hire Nick Spain to design your house, or even just a room, know you’ll have to play Marry/Date/Dump with him. When he and our February cover star Dan Pelosi (aka GrossyPelosi) teamed up to confect a candy-coated kitchen and pantry that would blend seamlessly with the rest of the chromatic interiors of Pelosi’s historic Hudson Valley home, they got together first to look at photos of miniature horses, chartreuse Shaker cabinetry, and gentleman farmers.
The premise is simple, yet masterful for creating what Spain calls a “shared language” for the rest of the project. If you marry an image, you have to explain why you love it. Choose to date it? You’ll need to describe why you think it’s cute but not for you in the long term. And if you select to dump it, suggesting you “have a visceral reaction of loathing”, no notes needed. “The whole exercise is geared toward helping clients begin to understand and articulate what exactly they’re looking for, bringing some levity to the overall process,” Spain explains.
Together with architect Stephanie Lee and contractor William Tyroll, the pair decided that the circa-1940s kitchen and garage weren’t worth saving—that, actually, the structures’ disrepair presented an opportunity to complete the home just as Pelosi wanted. During the design process, Lee and Spain called on ramshackle New England farmhouses, midcentury West Coast ranch architecture, and Pelosi’s Italian roots to inform their decisions. “We imagined the interior as though some kind of older woman had come into this old farmhouse during the Women’s Lib movement and decided to give it a redo,” Spain says. “It very much feels like taking the Grossy brand through a time machine.”
Ahead, get a look at all the details of the renovation.
Draw On Family History
“What excited me most about working with Dan was that he wanted his home to be a true extension of his personality—deeply rooted in fun-loving family tradition, layered with comfort, and built for gathering,” says Spain. And Pelosi knew he was in good hands with someone who finds inspiration in unconventional places. “He’s very rooted in history and respecting that,” Pelosi says.
Together, they wove the cookbook author’s biography into every corner of the renovation, incorporating meaningful family heirlooms and patina-lending vintage pieces wherever they could. Cushions and curtains were sewn by women in Pelosi’s family, his grandfather’s armchair was reupholstered (it lives near the antique dishes cupboard sourced in Hudson), and lighting over the kitchen table recalls those from Pelosi’s grandparents’ home. The beam supports across the ceiling are even a nod to his partner Gus Heagerty’s childhood home, all the way down to the bolt placement.
Get Colorful
Pelosi’s extensive art collection was a fruitful resource in creating the palette for the renovation. By identifying key paintings and drawing hues from them, the pair was able to pull together groups that Spain says surprised even him. He illustrates the point by calling out how they used varying shades of red with a spectrum of blues and blue-greens that ended up dazzling.
“I fell in love with a few color combinations that I never would’ve dreamt up had I not been fully immersed in this world,” he says. He adds that Pelosi was equally open to going to new places, loving a shade of vivid mint green that Spain showed him so much that he swathed his bedroom in it.
Add a Ton of Windows
It’s not a stretch to say that the number one priority for Pelosi was letting as much sun as possible into the kitchen. While the original home was punctuated by colossal 10-foot windows, the added-on cookspace was afforded just two small ones, and “it just didn’t take advantage of the beautiful light that comes up in the morning and at the end of the day,” he remembers. The new 750-square-foot addition now boasts a dizzying amount, from a nearly entirely glass view into the backyard, a row looking out over the sink and countertops, and several panes facing the driveway and road. “The way that the kitchen was oriented was really important,” Pelosi explains. “I wanted to place the stovetop where the sun sets, and I created a huge counter that’s surrounded by windows in the front of the kitchen so that I could have a surface to shoot my photos on and also serve food.”
Supersize the Pantry
Spain took further cues from regional architecture when conceiving the connection between the rest of the house and the kitchen. “There’s a long history of New England settlers creating covered breezeways to link their barns with the main house so they could avoid the snow in winter,” he says. But with Pelosi’s interests in a style reminiscent of midcentury California, the designer married both ideas by modeling the addition off old rancho outbuildings like hay lofts and horse stables. The breezeway became home to Pelosi’s spacious pantry, powder room, and mudroom. “With the amount of cooking and hosting Dan does we knew that we had to create a space that was highly functional,” Spain says.
A full wall of cabinetry keeps extra appliances, a stackable washer-dryer, and expansive dry goods storage behind closed doors, the entire unit cloaked in a screaming farmhouse red. After finishing the countertops in green tile and adding Shaker-style open shelving, they took the wallpaper all the way to the ceiling “to give the impression that you’re floating in some kind of Pop-Art-inflected garden.”
Tile All The Way Up The Wall
While Spain initially looked to add a chimney or open stove to the kitchen (a key feature of early rural New England kitchens, he says), Pelosi’s Italian heritage drove him into a deep dive on rustic cucinas. “Part of their vernacular is that they often have these vast tiled range hoods and work surfaces,” he explains. They married the visual impact of a chimney-like column with the Italian predilection for tile, and took it all the way to the ceiling, which Spain says speaks to the home’s New England locale. The stacked pattern brings to mind midcentury ranches, just like the ones that informed the addition’s interior architecture.
Make Space for Eating In
When Pelosi found out that the former owners of the home had left him their 10-foot farm table, he immediately knew he wanted to move it to the kitchen. “I love the idea of people sitting at the table, chopping vegetables and decorating cookies,” he says. They made space for the piece of furniture across from the island and closest to the wall of windows, and surrounded it with re-painted vintage chairs. Just the place you want to be while a pot of tortellini is bubbling at the stove.