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"I don't think I even stepped inside before I knew this was my house," says the wife. "The exterior is so beautiful, and where it's situated on the pond, we're very hidden."

The couple guesses the house was built in the early 1890s. "There's a stone at the bottom of the stairs that reads, 'Gerlach 1893,'" the husband says. "It was the Gerlach family, and they owned this plot of land back then."

The previous owner had meticulously renovated it, adding a sunroom in the back and updating the kitchen and bathrooms. (The shower in the master bath is bound on one side by large expanses of glass framed by rough-hewn beams and on the other by windows looking out towards the pond.) The house also has a small stone wine cellar and a big, beautiful fireplace made of large rocks.

Structurally, the couple kept it as is, but they needed help with the furnishings so they turned to Delrose. "We wanted something more relaxed and more modern than our city apartment," explains the husband. "And that's right up Kerry's alley. Basically, what he does is what we wanted." Mixing business and pleasure among friends is potentially disastrous, particularly in the world of interior design, where one person's definition of sleek and modern could be entirely different to another. But not here.

"It's an anomaly when friends can work with one another," Delrose admits, "but they said, 'We love what you do. We trust you.' And they do."