Text by Mary Forsell • Styling by Kathy Curotto • Photography by Gridley & Graves

It was a dark and stormy night in spring 2003. Daryl Duarte, vice president of information services at a healthcare company, and David Schiffer, a landscape architect, were at a dinner party when they heard that a nearby home they admired was coming on the market. Veteran house hunters who knew what they wanted, they sealed the deal with a handshake that very evening. “The owners, who were parents of a friend, turned over the keys right away,” David recalls.

Buying the place was the easy part. Within an intense, 13-week period, they replaced the roof and the pipes, redid the electric, added central air, sanded all the floors, and replastered the many-windowed, light-filled space.

(a) The 1928 home is an excellent example of a short-lived, early 20th-century architectural style known as storybook colonial. (b) With a background in catering, Daryl is the kitchen maestro. (c) Modern sofas mix with Mission furnishings and art pottery in the living room of Daryl Duarte and David Schiffer’s Fairfield, Connecticut, digs. “All good styles match,” David says. (d) Mica lampshade was a $3 find.

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