Sometime in the early 1920s, a Brooklyn lumberyard executive built a country retreat for his growing family in Laurel, a farmland community on Long Island’s North Fork that still retains much of its agricultural charm. Later handed down over several generations, the cedar-shake structure had little left to recommend it when four present-day cousins put it up for sale in 2018, but that was just the right recommendation for Sarah Binder Mehta and her husband, Punit. “It’s better to put your own stamp on something,” Sarah says. “We wanted a fixer-upper.”
That they got. Although beautifully sited on a bluff overlooking Great Peconic Bay, the house was a warren of dark rooms with tiny windows just begging to be opened up to sweeping views of the water, and the staircase leading to the second floor was so steep, narrow, and tight against the front entrance that “you practically bumped your nose when you walked in,” Sarah recounts. Additionally, the bathrooms were antiquated, and the kitchen not much better. Although the couple values cozy, “we also wanted to have lots of guests,” Punit says. Above all, adds Sarah, “it had to appeal to my sense of fun.”
To help transform the house into the getaway of their dreams, the Mehtas turned to designer Gideon Mendelson, who had worked on two previous projects for the couple and is known for his calming, elegant aesthetic. Although Sarah’s ideas for the house tended to lean toward “a little bit of fantasy,” she says, Mendelson remained unfazed by her storybook outlook, tempering her more fanciful suggestions while accommodating her husband’s desire for welcoming spaces fit for frequent entertaining. “Instead of drawing on the familiar Hamptons environment of neutral, sandy colors and pale water tones,” Mendelson says, “I went for a more dramatic palette, deepening it in places with jeweled hues.”
In the soothing primary bedroom, curtains made from Osborne & Little’s Colbert and roman shades crafted from a Libas Limited fabric play off a quilted coverlet from Casa Del Bianco.
The first-floor guest room features Quadrille’s Isfahan wallpaper and a nightstand from Lulu & Georgia.
Roman shades made from Clarence House’s Jembala fabric accent the second-floor guest room.
A Bergmann piano occupies the lattice-walled foyer. The petite stool is upholstered in Rogers & Goffigon’s Painterly in Kingfisher and a Samuel & Sons trim.
In the living room, a pair of Doheny armchairs from Orange are covered in Osborne & Little’s Innis Stripe in Aqua, and Serena & Lily’s Clement bench serves as a cocktail table. The rug is from Doris Leslie Blau.
In the dining area, a chandelier from Circa Lighting hangs above a suite of mahogany chairs based on an original 1950s design by Josef Frank for Svenskt Tenn. The drapes are made from Jim Thompson’s Peony Trellis.
The media room features a Cole & Son botanical print on the walls, an Apropos Furniture sofa upholstered in a Romo fabric, and a custom Mendelson Group ottoman with a cushion covered in Pierre Frey’s Yucatan in Vert.
Local architect Nancy Steelman completed an elevation to the roof while Mendelson reconfigured the rest of the house. (“I don’t think an original wall remains,” Punit says.) Sliding glass doors now run the entire length of the lower level on the bayside, where a new combined living and dining area have replaced three tiny bedrooms. Mendelson also added a generous skylight to illuminate an L-shaped staircase in the newly airy double-height foyer, designing a wave-like accent for the risers and covering the walls in a blue lattice inspired by a photograph of a garden room Sarah had shown him.
Positioned somewhat surprisingly against the entry’s whimsical lattice is a petite Bergmann piano—perhaps an unlikely choice for most people but an essential one for Sarah, who is president of PianoPiano, a rental company founded by her father in the 1970s. The Mehtas’ 16-month-old daughter can barely reach the keys, “but you can tell she already realizes that she can make a sound,” her mother says.
Sarah’s passion for printed wallpapers and luxuriant trims further reflects her taste for fantasy. The media room’s Fern wallpaper from Cole & Son “reminds me of the hanging plants I loved in the breakfast room of the home I grew up in,” she recalls, while her penchant for the far-flung is reflected in Quadrille’s Isfahan wallpaper in the downstairs guest room and Jim Thompson’s Peony Trellis fabric used for the drapes in the living and dining area. Mendelson struck a smart balance by opting for clean-lined seating pieces, including a suite of reissued mahogany-and-rattan dining chairs originally designed in 1957 by Josef Frank for Svenkst Tenn. Their lyre-like backs are suggestive of upside-down anchors or mermaids’ tails. “I insisted on keeping things sophisticated even when they were playful,” he says.
Nothing is more playful, though, than the proliferation of decorative monkeys, Sarah’s pet obsession, scattered throughout. “After Punit and I started dating,” she says, “he started calling me his ‘little monkey.’” It just so happens that Mendelson, a bit of a monkey maven himself, had been holding on to some of Clarence House’s Jembala fabric, a lively print featuring monkeys and other jungle creatures, “for a kid’s room or a playroom,” he says. Instead, it’s now the focal point in the second-floor guest room in the form of eye-catching roman shades. Sarah even calls the house Bandarstan “because ‘bandar’ means ‘monkey’ in Hindi,” she says. It’s a fitting name for a place where fantasy has a home.
