above: A Loloi rug grounds the dining room space. The custom table is a favorite spot for the family to gather. – Photo by Loloi
This Must Be The Place
After an exhaustive search for her dream home, Becca Casey’s discovery of this Wilton gem was love at first site
INTERVIEW WITH BECCA CASEY, BECCA INTERIORS // PHOTOGRAPHY BY RIKKI SNYDER AND LOLOI
Who lives here?
There are quite a few of us at this point. It’s me, my husband and my two kids, and then my mother-in-law also lives with us, which is really wonderful. She’s a young soul, is very fun, and has a great relationship with our kids. It’s just wonderful having her around the kids from such a tender age. Then we have our two dogs, Buddy and Toby.
How long have you been in this house?
It’s going on six years now. It’s our first home that we’ve owned together or owned ever, so it’s very special to us. It’s definitely a home that we foresee spending many, many years; no plans on moving. I think if anything, we would just plan to put more work into it and expand when we can. Before we moved here, we were in Greenwich for two years. We had moved from the city and were kind of feeling our way around, just seeing where we were going to land.
What drew you to it?
We were looking around and again, we were just kind of naively looking at towns that we knew. We were looking in Darien, we were looking in New Canaan, and a big part of the equation was that my husband was still working and commuting into the city. I ended up going to a doctor’s appointment, and I told him we were house hunting, and he said, “Oh, you should look in my town. There are so many Brits there.” He lived in Wilton, and honestly, I don’t think I had heard of the town until he mentioned it. I went home and relayed that conversation to my husband, and he immediately jumped on his laptop and started looking up houses.
Until that point, my poor husband had been showing me house after house after house that I said no to. I really wanted a brick house, which is incredibly hard to find in this area. Sure enough, the first home he pulled up when he looked in Wilton was this one. I just saw a picture of it, and I was like, “That’s it.” It was just this kismet moment. So, we bought the home, and it needed a lot of work. It’s got beautiful bones and it’s changed hands a few times and went through a renovation during the late ‘70s.
Tell us about the range of projects you’ve done since moving in, if any.
I knew that foundationally, I wanted to make sure that we had a palette that was going to lend to my overall vision. The exterior was stucco-ed, we slurry plastered the bricks and painted them in a beautiful custom ivory. Of course, I could not make up my mind on an ivory that already existed, so I had to customize the paint color, which has been fun over the years for touch-ups (laughs). We completely ripped out all of the flooring throughout. It was a mixture of tile and dark oak, and I really wanted to have this seven-inch white oak boarding throughout, so that was one of the first things we did.
The house has these incredible windows which are so rare, where they are practically floor to ceiling, so there’s so much natural light that comes in. But I realized when we were first in there that some of the openings and the doorways felt sort of small and just didn’t feel like they really opened up the space as well. So, I sort of architecturally opened up some of the walls to really give them a better flow. We added new trim, all new moulding, all new paint. We’ve renovated bathrooms, we added reclaimed beams into the formal living room area. We’ve definitely chipped away at it, but it’s just an ongoing project.
Where do you spend the most time?
I really feel like it depends on the season. As a family, we spend a lot of time in the snug, which is a downstairs area that was a finished basement, but we expanded a little bit to incorporate a family room and a gym. Right now, we’re spending so much time outside. This property is very interesting in that we have the pool in front of the house. I think that was really designed because of the way that the sun moves over the house. In the back of the lot, it gets very shady early in the day, which is nice. I would say the dining room, too. Every day, we do family meals around the table, so we’re always in there.
It looks like you have a great mix of old and new pieces. Where are some of your favorite places to source antiques?
It’s really been during my travels, anything that feels like it resonates naturally, and just catches my eye, or I feel a very personal sort of gravitational pull towards it. It’s just been this very slow, intentional sourcing over time. There are definitely areas where it’s like: This wall feels very void. I think I should source a hutch for here. In the living room, I scored an amazing hutch up from Facebook Marketplace. I can’t believe it. I know I got very lucky. I love the mix of the antiques, but also not feeling like everything is so patinaed and overdone. It’s that juxtaposition with some clean lines or a slipcover or a really nice textile or even the paint color. I tend to go for a palette of just really subdued chalky colors, so nothing feels too bright or too overt.
Do you have any plans to take on any future projects here?
Ideally, we’re looking to redo the kitchen, but completely reposition it in the home. It will span where the office and dining room sit right now and that will allow that end of the house to incorporate a proper laundry room and mud room area as well. That’s one portion, and then on the other end of the house, off the back where our current primary bedroom is, there’s a finished deck, which is quite big. Our idea is to build out on that deck with a new primary suite. Our room will become either a guest room, or it will be a room for my daughter to graduate to. As I mentioned, we have a lot of people in this house, so it would be nice to have that flexibility of an additional room. We have the capacity to build up into the attic—it’s quite large—so our idea is putting two bedrooms up there as well.
Do you find that it’s harder for you to design for yourself than for clients?
In a sense, yes, because I don’t have their budgets (laughs). I just do what comes naturally. It’s like a language for me. Every so often, I’ll move things around, or I’ll take accessories from one room to another and just refresh. I’m constantly tinkering.