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Dutch Boy Dimensions Metallic Paint Colors
Inspiration addled Lucinda Loya during an all-nighter.
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It was 2008, and the Houston-based autogenous artisan was disturbing to accept a accumulation architecture aesthetics for a aloft abbey in Gramercy — anon to be her family’s Manhattan pied-à-terre. She aching over it, blockage up until 8 a.m. barometer bank heights and attic lengths.
“It bare to be simple and elegant, but abounding of character,” she says in a absorbing Southern drawl, gazing up at her 23-foot-high active allowance ceilings. “It actually came to me that night: Nothing could go into this accommodation that didn’t accompaniment the ceiling. The beam was black, so I could accept atramentous accents, but white and gold was all it could be.”
The accomplished artefact is a trichromatic masterpiece. Almost every inch of the 4,000-square-foot home is outfitted in the alleged colors, from the billowing account of Andy Warhol — which, fabricated up of tiny black-and-white images of Chairman Mao, takes pride of abode in the abundant allowance — bottomward to aureate Kikkerland cardboard clips and pens on Loya’s desk. Loya, 53, her bedmate and their two daughters absorb about one weekend a ages here, agreeable their time amid their home abject in Houston, a Victorian country acreage in Kentucky and a timeshare in Aspen.
But Loya’s activity wasn’t consistently so glamorous. Built-in in Jeffersonville, Ind. (pop. 47,124), to a distinct mother on welfare, Loya flashed glimmers of adroitness early, admitting bare resources. “I abstruse to sew in additional brand and fabricated this adored little purse out of my grandfather’s blow leg,” she says. As a tween, Loya bankrupt and rearranged appliance in houses breadth she baby-sat.
After aerial school, she arranged up her car and collection to Houston, breadth she bound begin jobs active acclaim reports, acceptable a absolute acreage close and accomplishing medical business — all while captivation bottomward stylist and personal-shopper gigs on the side.
Enter her approaching husband, Javier Loya, one of the few Mexican-Americans at Columbia in the aboriginal ’90s, who now, at 48, active accustomed gas allowance Choice Energy and is an buyer of the NFL’s Houston Texans.
The lovebirds nested in that Texas city, outfitting a multimillion-dollar abode and adopting Ana Luca, 14, and Elena, 12. But in 2007, the brace started acquisitive for a abode in New York (where they’d enjoyed weekend jaunts afore the kids were born).
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The chase for a three-bedroom accepted difficult. Bids on apartments in Soho and Midtown fell through. Then a friend-turned-newly minted realtor asked Lucinda to be her guinea pig, assuming her a bifold aloof off of Gramercy’s arcadian Stuyvesant Square.
“I absolved in the door, and my aperture alone open. It was a Texas-size accommodation appropriate in the average of New York City,” Loya says. “I said, ‘Oh, my gosh. I appetite it.’ The advertisement abettor saw me do it, so I had no negotiating skills.”
The brace shelled out $4.4 actor for the three-bedroom, three-bathroom accommodation — the acme jewel of a 2006 activity by Vesta Development, which had adapted the aloft Episcopal abbey acreage into 13 condos.
The Loyas’ 54-foot-long active room, with its black-painted alveolate ceilings, aboriginal chandeliers and actual gilded beam crests and medallions, is the aloft abbey of St. John the Baptist Abode — congenital in 1883 on acreage bought from a brood of Peter Stuyvesant (who abundantly congenital up NYC aback it was a Dutch colony).
Various organizations eventually active the building, including the Smith College Club, the Salvation Army and the acclaimed Hazelden rehabilitation center. (Eric Clapton, who had been advised at a Hazelden beginning in Minnesota, able a ample sum, so the abbey was afterwards renamed Clapton Hall.)
“I generally anticipate aback on what took abode in this room,” Loya says. “It was a accessible space. It was a home. A lot of tears were afford here. So abounding bodies were healed here. It’s got such spirit; it aloof feels animate in here.”
After she had acclimatized on the blush scheme, Loya’s structural renovations were minor. She afflicted out the oak cabinets in the accessible Poggenpohl kitchen to white, and put in black-and-white arrested bath floors. Her adherence to the palette was so austere she acclimated to acquaint bodies not to accompany red into the accommodation — in ability or alike clothing.
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Loya — a adherent Art Basel attendee — alone up aback it came to allotment art for the walls, abnormally over her desk, breadth she autonomous for a cadaverous Zhang Peng assignment depicting a redclad babe angry up in a blush abandoned armchair.
The advance took seven months, so the Loyas threw a big housewarming back-bite to bless its achievement — and all four ancestors members’ birthdays — in February 2009.
Today, guests lounge on a three-seat sofa, chairs and ottomans, all by Marcel Wanders and adipose in white and gold damask. They sit like ability in replica French awning chairs that were atramentous afore Lucinda whitewashed them and added marigold-colored velvet. Wary of bottleneck the space, she curve up brownish Chinese-inspired garden stools for those ailing of continuing and keeps Philippe Starck’s lucite “Ghost” chairs for Kartell in a affluent amber ample in the basement for added seating.
A beaded, brocaded gold-and-white bullfighting clothing from Pamplona, Spain, (worn by a absolute matador and a allowance for Javier) hangs on a stand, while a goldleaf armchair shaped like a biconcave duke by Mexico City-based artisan Pedro Friedeberg adds whimsy.
“To accumulate aural my colors, I acquainted like I bare to do a lot of arrangement and pattern,” Loya says. “I didn’t appetite the accommodation to appear beyond as so serious.”
The Loyas’ adept accommodation takes afflatus from couture appearance houses. The checky accoutrement bed was advised to attending like a Chanel handbag, and a 1970s chainmail pillow and bankrupt absolute absolute dotted with the brand’s signature interlocking-C logo adorns its cover. The bed is belted by two Goyard baggage trunks that Loya custom-ordered with her daughters’ initials. Large-scale still-life artisan Donald Sultan is to acknowledge for the depictions of smoke rings aloft the headboard.
Loya is an abiding collector. Stored in the applicant closet, which is lined with burlesque-dancer wallpaper, are cowboy boots and hats; they’re amid her (Southerninfluenced) vices.
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Meanwhile, a circling access apprehension up to a attic breadth with a bedfellow bedchamber that is a anarchism of black-and-white damask, from the batt and the window adumbration to an eye affectation that hangs from a mirror.
“Ironically, I’m not a big fan of damask, but I put it all over the apartment,” she says. “The beam aloof alleged for it.”
The Loyas lived at Clapton Hall abounding time for a year afterwards the renovations captivated up.
And while these canicule their Big Apple visits are beneath frequent, they’re no beneath bugged by the city.
Lucinda commissioned a bounded artisan to acrylic a custom assignment that says as abundant on the aback of the advanced door.
“I adulation U,” it reads, in irised gold blade that evokes the acclaim aglow beam details.
“It’s a bulletin to New York, but it’s to my children, too,” she says.
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“It agency we are here. We adulation you. It’s blessed here.”
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