the Independent Home & Garden Special Section 2012

Featuring:

A Bounty Of Birdhouses

You’re So Vane

&HomeGarden

The Independent’s

2012

Hamptons

Barbara Feldman,The Home Stager C-3

C-4C-6

Organize Your Closet C-10

Inde

pend

ent /

Jes

sica

Mac

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By Rick Murphy

Not too many real estate brokers on the East End can say they invented a genre, but Barbara Feldman can.

A veteran interior designer and space planner, Feldman brought the concept of “staging” to the Hamptons, and it is now an every day occurrence.

“Empty houses leave people cold,” she commented. “The point of staging is to design it not so it appeals to the owner but so it appeals to the mass market.” The trick: give the house curb appeal – “most buyers make up their mind within 30 seconds of entering a house,” Feldman maintained.

Feldman works within a pre-fixed

budget. The client will buy the fur-niture and sell it with the house or keep it. She may suggest a paint job. “I even de-clutter,” she said. The return on investment comes to the buyer at the closing – “you’ll get much closer to your asking price.”

Feldman may sug-gest an interior paint job if she believes a house to be in need. “If you have a motivated seller they will do what they have to do. It’s a marketing tool – you get more bang for your buck.” It may just be a matter of reorganizing what’s already in the house and accessoriz-ing it.

Feldman is a profes-sional. She has 35 years experience in related fields, and de-signed a lot of commercial spaces, es-pecially in the health care area. She is also an AIA and NYS accredited staging professional, and one of the founding patrons of the National Symposium on Healthcare Design (in 1986).

She moved to East Hampton 27 years ago, and brought the concept

staging with her.“I was bi-coastal at

the time, and it was a new concept,” she related. “The staging movement came out

of California. Out here, people didn’t understand it. They ask, ̀Why should I pay money?’”

“It was a tough sell,” Feldman said, but she persevered and then prospered.

“Every house I did sold.” Her next move was to become a real estate agent. “I was selling houses for real estate agents and they were making

Barbara FeldmaN

CONTINUED ON PAGE 12.

BEFORE . . .

After . . .

all the money,” she said. “I got my license and hit the ground running.”

Feldman is now a licensed broker, but has taken a step back from selling. “I decided to reassess what I’m doing. I did real estate for seven years and I kept getting better offers, but it’s time to go back to design work.”

Feldman also works with renters. “One client said I must have done something wrong because he got more than the asking price.” He’s been a cli-ent ever since.

Feldman doesn’t need to take apart a whole house to make it more attrac-tive to a buyer. “I concentrate on the

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A lifetime. Avid birdwatchers don’t have to

leave their kitchens any more, thanks to the Peekaboo window nest view birdhouse. It’s clear, made with recyclable products, and attaches right on to your window, giving you a . . . ahem . . . bird’s eye view of feathered friends as they nest and raise their young. And for the kid-dies? Marders also car-ries birdhouse sets ready for painting.

Besides their practical use, b i r d h o u s e s h a v e a l s o

been in fash-ion as objets

d’art in some homes. While shopping for

home furnishings at Eng-lish Country Antiques up the road apiece on Snake

Hollow Road in Bridge-hampton, make sure to

check out their collection of vintage purple martin houses.

Wild Bird Crossing in the Bridge-hampton Commons is all about

By Kitty Merrill

They’re not just your kid’s Webelos badge project anymore. Be they tiny havens for wrens or massive “hotels” for martins, birdhouses have become the de rigueur outdoor accessory for any Hamptons home – and local nurs-eries have plenty of them.

Visit just a few of the South Fork’s popular garden centers and you’ll find a near dizzying array of avian abodes. Here’s just a snippet of the selection:

Marders Garden Center and Nurs-ery on Snake Hollow Road in Bridge-hampton boasts birdhouses that aren’t mere lawn (or tree) orna-ments. They’re art. Step outside to their café seating area and you get to see an enormous top-of-the-line birdhouse any Lab-rador would be happy to call home, and fit snugly inside. Handmade by a lo-cal artist, it’s in a primitive style and crafted of wood and metal.

Inside Marders stunning garden shop, find quaint red dwellings made of cast mesquite designed to last a

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Bounty OF Birdhousesbirds, birds, and nothing but birds. (Well, maybe squirrels, and other little animals, too). “We have every-thing you need to enjoy the birds outdoors,” manager Michael Mackey

crowed. Oodles of birdhouses may be found among a vast selection

of seed, birdbaths, bird feeders, hummingbird feeders and

even butterfly houses. An unusual discovery? Tiny

roosting pockets that serve as winter refuge

for small birds like wrens or chicka-

dees.Right in the

heart of South-ampton Village

on Prospect and North Sea Road,

Lynch’s Garden Center carries a variety of birdhouses running the gamut from rustic to intricately architectured. Audubon cottage birdhouses look just like elegant Hamptons homes, and are made of recycled plastic, meaning they’ll last a long time. Lynch’s has Mini Terrapin houses and beehive birdhouses, plus sea grass nesting bags.

At Walpole Woodworkers prob-ably the most striking offering on the Montauk Highway, Water Mill, site, is a house, not for the birds; for your little chickens. When you’re out browsing for garden and home, don’t miss the chance to see a playhouse replica of a gracious home replete with balcony, glassed solarium boast-ing a baby, baby grand piano, and brass doorknocker.

Back to birdhouses, Walpole’s got those, too. Extravagant versions made of cellular vinyl (Read: no rot, no mold, no peeling paint –indestruc-tible!), with copper tops and carousel styles. They carry bat houses and


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By Kitty Merrill

Ancient Greeks thought the winds were harbingers of the gods. The earliest recorded weather vane, an homage to the Greek god Triton, was found (not surprisingly) in the Tower of Winds in Athens circa 48 B.C.

Fast forward centuries and even in today’s age of GPS and Blackberries when you can find out wind speed and direction in a stroke, weather vanes continue to capture the imagi-nation of homeowners.

The folks at Eastland Farms of Wa-ter Mill are well aware of the magic of the vane. For the last 10 years,

Eastland has been home to the big-gest selection of weather vanes on the South Fork.

Stop by their site on Montauk Highway and try not to stare at the hypnotic spinning vanes. Classic styles like pineapple, rooster, goose, stag and ship twirl alongside a funky dragon, a car, a dolphin. In the shop, you can find tabletop wind vanes, not to mention a larger one in the shape of a rifle.

The vanes are crafted by Good Directions, America’s leading manu-facturer of accents for the home. Models available at Eastland are predominantly crafted in copper,

though some are also aluminum. Good Directions weathervanes

are made by American craftsmen, and handcrafted with sculptural detail to add elegance to any size home or barn. Many are available in polished copper or blue Verde copper. If a style you like isn’t in stock, staff at Eastland will also help you choose from additional vanes in the Good Directions catalogue.

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By Alfonsina Romero

As a part of your an-nual spring-cleaning, organizing and maxi-mizing the space in your home should be priority. When you combine all of your out-of-season apparel, heaping shoe collection and oversized handbags that are too cute to throw away, your closets mimic the apocalypse.

C l o s e t Room i s a b u s i n e s s that under-stands how an organized s p a c e c a n take the clut-ter out of your day, and has provided ideas to organ ize wardrobes with essential clos-

et storage items.The number

one rule to an or-ganized closet is to hang smart. Tha t means t h e r i g h t type of hang-er for your clothes: wire pants hang-ers, chrome hangers, cedar hangers, skin-ny felt hang-ers, and the ad-justable extra rod to create more space to hang from. Clos-et Room makes a new skinny felt hanger that can maximize the space in a closet by 40 percent.

Organizing your existing luggage pieces is the third best way to utilize storage in your closet. Using your existing l u g g a g e t o store season-al pieces is a creative and stylish way to keep clutter out of sight. They will be more acces-sible when it is time for a season change, and it’s a plus if you want to show off nice luggage. Use carry-on size luggage to store items like rain boots, and even winter boots when it is summer time. During the winter months, store your shorts and flip flops in the same carry on.

Consider cedar elements in your current closet, or when you are planning a closet design. The ben-efits of cedar wood are more than just aromatic and visual, they are important. For storage purposes, cedar is particularly effective in attics and basements, as it protects your clothes from humidity, mil-dew and moths.

Unlike other wood species, ce-dar is stable -- it does not loose its shape, and that’s why it is the ma-terial used in saunas, beach houses, outdoor furniture and decks. Cedar is rot resistant, insect repellant, and can last a long time.

The cedar closet from Closet Room ships in a box, pre cut and ready to install. It includes shelv-ing and can be customized to your measurements. There are options available for customers who prefer not to have a fully cedar closet. Ex-isting closet drawers can be lined with cedar, or cedar can be used as backing panels or in combination with another material.

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Organize Your Closet!

Top left: Alfonsina Romero, founder of “Closet Room” designing a closet. Above (top to bottom): Cedar for a closet design, “Closet Room” skinny hangers, a “Closet Room” design by Romero at Milux Home Store in SoHo.


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butterfly shelters, too. On site, you’ll even get to

see the avian abodes in ac-tion. There’s one elder wood birdhouse on an outdoor post that’s lively with birdie action. “I couldn’t get rid of it because every year it’s got babies in it,” proprietress Shannan Fetty explained.

Back in Bridgehampton,

BirdhousesCONTINUED FROM PAGE C-4.

So VaneCONTINUED FROM PAGE C-6.

Salty Home in the Commons carries cute houses for the cute critters. They’ve got tall, free standing metal birdhouses, homes in the shape of stars hanging from metal arrows, and even a whimsical “Surf Shack” for your Beach Boy birds.

Beyond local garden centers, many of the area’s hardware store, like Bernie’s Village Hardware in East Hampton, also carry what you need to get watching one of Mother Nature’s most delightful treasures.

the weather vane atop Monticello so he could read wind direction from indoors. During the 1800’s the trend in vanes was distinctly patriotic, with federal eagles a favorite. By the 19th century, wind vanes were mass produced in a slew of styles, and in the last decades of the 19th century, Victorian homeowners were fond of adorning almost every inch of roof space on their homes with fancy weather vanes and metal embellishments.

FeldmanCONTINUED FROM PAGE C-3.

main rooms. The living room and master bedroom are key – they have to be appealing. If the kid’s room is vacant that’s OK. Empty houses leave empty feelings.”

Don’t take her word for it, though. “Staging can speed up sales in a sluggish market and bump up the price from two to 10 percent,” according to the Wall Street Journal. For more about Feldman’s work visit HamptonsDesignandStaging.com.

Feldman stresses the importance of appealing to the potential buyers, not the owner.

BEFORE . . .

. . . After



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the Independent Home & Garden Special Section 2012