Patricia Demento’s small dining room didn’t keep her from thinking big. “When I built this house for myself six years ago, I knew I wanted to do something in a Gothic Adirondack style,” says Demento.
Demento, an interior designer and co-owner of Moose Creek Ltd. in Colonie, N.Y., focused on an elegant, yet casual tone, for the room, that was inspired by a pine hutch her mother-in-law gave her more than four decades ago.
“I had [the hutch] painted in an earthy red with gold undertones,” says Demento, who loves country life, animals and canoeing. “I love living and working with red. The gold tone was drawn from the amber lead-glass windows in the top doors. Looking at the thick lead around the glass, I decided to create a faux gazebo with heavy gnarled wooden tracery as my homage to the Gothic theme.”
Demento compiled photos and pictures from books and magazines of images that she would like to look out at from her gazebo. The surrounding murals were painted by Kevin Clark of Troy, N.Y. “The [murals] are an amalgam of Lake Placid and Lake George” in far-northern New York, says Demento.
“I always had a fantasy of having a gazebo out on an island and these scenes are what I would like to look at off of my property.”
There are clouds on the ceiling and wooded and mountainous lake scenes on the walls in between doors and windows. Included are a male and female moose drinking water and a small church on a tiny island.
“The church was on a Christmas card I got several years ago,” recalls Demento, who likes to start her day in this room with the paper and a cup of coffee. “I saved it knowing that I wanted to use it somewhere someday. I really feel like I’m outdoors when I’m in this room. This room makes me happy. It’s very important to have a room you enjoy.”
Demento says she would have made the room bigger, but she was thinking small, as an empty nester, at the time of construction.
The room is lighted by an outdoorsy wrought-iron chandelier entwined with metal leaves, antique gold metal birds and a small mottled red, gold and black paper shade on each bulb. A table with sliding hidden leaves can expand to seat 10.
A lover of folk art, Demento has another table along the window wall with black crows hand-painted on top. The painted Parsons table not only adds to the nature theme of the room and gives her extra space for serving pieces, but it is a favorite vantage point for her two cats.
“The room only took two weeks to complete,” says Demento. “The murals have a coat of stain on them to give the scenes a muted, aged look. To enforce the outdoors feeling, I change the flowers and plants on a regular basis, especially with the seasons.”
