Keeping Treasures From the Past Useful

Across the room, near a woodstove that lives in the fireplace (“It pretty much heats the whole house”), sit some blankets for the babies. “I bartered them for tote bags I made,” says Kim, nodding toward the old electric sewing machine in the dining room. Kim sometimes gives sewing lessons to her friends’ kids, happy to be paid in fabric (the older the better), which she uses to make aprons. “I’m also sort of the resident costume designer for the school,” she says. The sewing machine dates back to the 1920s. Kim bought it just after she moved to New York City to work as a costume apprentice, and it’s still going strong.

One trick to Kim’s ethereal interior is that she doesn’t use window screens: “I don’t like the way they look.” She says that sheers provide enough protection and uses linen Pottery Barn curtains downstairs, inexpensive polyester sheers in the bedrooms. “They keep out 90 percent of the bugs,” she says. “Except spiders, but we don’t mind those.”