The Log Cabin No One Wanted

Jake Szymanski grew up in a Colorado log house. He thought he'd never want to live in one again.

- WENDY GOODMAN

WHEN FURNITURE DESIGNER Jake Szymanski started scouring the Hudson Valley for a house, his mission was to find “something that no one had touched.” But for nearly two years, he says, most everything he looked at had been “whitewashed or had weird extensions.” Finally, his broker took him to a 1952 log cabin in Stone Ridge that had been languishing on the market. “She tells me there is this gorgeous pond in front,” he says. “And I go, ‘Pam, this is kind of a swamp, let’s be honest.’ That didn’t deter him, nor did the ancient wall-to-wall carpets: “You couldn’t tell the original color. It was gross, gross, gross.”