Featured Project
Cary Country EState
Seventeen wooded acres in the middle of Cary, North Carolina
Location
Cary, NC
Type
17 Acres New Construction
Architecture
Greg Tankersley, McAlpine House
Builder
Rufty Homes
Our Scope
Interiors & Furnishings
“I didn’t want the home to look or feel like a museum.”
The House
An English country estate, hidden inside a city.
Most people picture Cary as the Research Triangle — technology, suburbs, convenience.
Behind a winding drive and a bridge over a creek sits something else entirely: seventeen wooded acres, wildflower and vegetable gardens, and a house that could have stood in the English countryside for two hundred years.
Greg Tankersley of McAlpine designed it for a family he had known for years, modelling it on an old English country estate — an unassuming, off-centre entrance, and a formal face turned toward the garden.
Stone archways at the rear separate the covered outdoor rooms from the pool deck. Inside, living room, dining room and kitchen run together as one space, divided not by walls but by furniture, a two-sided fireplace and a run of suspended glass-and-steel cabinetry.
The architecture was finished and it was superb. Our commission was everything that goes inside it.
“The couple has an extensive art collection. I asked them to choose their favorite pieces, which set the color scheme.”
Sandra Moncada-Mainz · Southern Home
The Brief
Calm, with a touch of whimsy.
The homeowners wanted rooms that felt sunny, bright and quiet — and a house their children and their cats could genuinely live in.
They also owned an extensive art collection, and a few pieces of furniture they were not ready to part with.
An open plan of this size fails in a predictable way: everything reads as one long room, and nothing feels settled.
The work was to give each area its own centre of gravity without building a single wall.
THREE DECISIONS
01
The art chose the palette
Rather than present a scheme and hope the collection agreed with it, we asked the homeowners to pull their favourite pieces first. Those works set the colour story, and every fabric, finish and rug in the house was chosen to sit behind them rather than compete.
02
A quiet foundation, then colour
Taupe, grey, white and warm wood throughout — the calm the clients wanted. Their own palette of pinks and blues was then dotted through the rooms in fabric and accessories rather than applied wall to wall, so the color arrives as a lift instead of a theme.
03
Specified for real life
“Sandra was absolutely fantastic to work with. She has a great eye for design and incorporated her insight and knowledge with our personal tastes and goals. The level of attention she put into every last detail was amazing. She delivered everything and more!
It was a very rewarding experience and our project is stunning. I relish the opportunity to work with Sandra in the future!”
O.G
“The clients already had two Baker side chairs that were not very exciting and had been forgotten in their former home. I lacquered and reupholstered them in blue velvet, and they came alive in a corner of the living room.”
Sandra Moncada-Mainz · Southern Home
What We Kept
Two forgotten chairs.
The homeowners arrived with pieces from their previous house that they hoped could be used again. Among them were two Baker side chairs that nobody had looked at properly in years.
That is the part of this work that rarely photographs: deciding what already belongs in a house before deciding what to buy for it.
Everything else was sourced new — outdoor furniture from Italy, modern pieces from Canada, one showstopper from France, and a great many things from vendors across the United States.
Never for the sake of going abroad. Only ever because that was where the right piece was.
The Install
One delivery date, not forty.
Every order was placed, tracked, inspected and stored by the studio, then installed in a single pass. Nothing arrived at the house in a box for the clients to solve, and nothing went in until all of it was ready.
They walked into a finished house — furnished, lit, hung and made up, inside and out.