Here's a sneak peek from the July/August issue of Elle Decor, which hits newsstands on June 26: a six-page feature on Sandra Lee's Westchester County home, which the Food Network's best dresser and burgeoning housewares designer shares with her boyfriend, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and his daughters.
Now, this property—nicknamed Lily Pond—has been published a couple of times before (in Dec. 2010 in USA Today and again in Vogue a few months later), but those pieces focus on the stuff Lee's famous for: holiday decorating. (A snippet from the Vogue story: "[A] family of decorative polar bears frolics on the sideboard in artificial snow, an enormous silver tiger reclines on a mother-of-pearl coffee table, and in the fireplace are—what else?—white birch logs that are clearly never going to see a match.")
Anyway, here the focus is on how the 1950s Colonial came to be and what it looks like without being, say, bedecked in tinsel or decorative frolicking bears. Some history: Lee found the property in 2009 and immediately set to renovate it, doing away with the "decidedly aggressive ’70s interior" and things such as "robin’s-egg-blue bunny wallpaper." She did all the decorating herself, choosing paint colors, fabrics, and accessories over a two-year-long process she remembers as "so much work and so overwhelming." Save for some choices in the dining room (which Lee has termed the "Founding Fathers Room"), Cuomo didn't offer many opinions, but there is an exercise room with a Jim Morrison poster that is most certainly a man cave. (Governors: they're just like us!)
Like what's going on here? It's possible to get a closer look: the house directly across the street is on the market for $699K.
· Next Month in Elle Decor: July/August 2012 [Elle Decor]
· All Sandra Lee coverage [Curbed National]
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