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" &amp;quot;I added a dining room. It has really changed the way we live in the house. I originally designed the house with a combination kitchen \u2014 dining room, but it became more a kitchen \u2014 sitting room. It&amp;#039;s wonderful for casual small groups, but I realized we needed \u2014 wanted \u2014 a real dining room, too. I designed it in the style of a French orangerie. Now, we don&amp;#039;t have to limit ourselves to eight guests. We can give a dinner for 24.&amp;quot;\u2014ROBERT COUTURIER &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve done many &amp;#039;quiet&amp;#039; updates to our 1920s shingle-and-stone house. The most dramatic is a new room we added with granite walls, an antique French limestone floor, a six-foot-tall limestone fireplace and vaulted ceiling with old oak beams. Even though it&amp;#039;s a modernization, it looks so appropriate that when the building inspector came to see it, he asked where the new structure was!&amp;quot;\u2014JACQUELYNNE P. LANHAM &amp;quot;I never set out to be a collector. But as my acquisitions have grown, I&amp;#039;ve had to accommodate them. There are many more tables, many more bookcases, and much less wall space. It&amp;#039;s as if I&amp;#039;m living on the set of The Blob \u2014 &amp;#039;Nothing can stop it!&amp;#039;&amp;quot;\u2014MICHAEL FORMICA &amp;quot;For years I dreamed of an Indian-style bathroom. Finally I took the plunge. It&amp;#039;s my new haven \u2014 glamorous, shimmery, magical. I also redid my closet. Now I find everything without getting frenetic. Organizing and de-cluttering has changed my life!\u2014JENNIFER GARRIGUES &amp;quot;My home is a lot more relaxed, less rigid. As I&amp;#039;ve &amp;#039;matured,&amp;#039; I&amp;#039;ve gotten comfortable with the serendipitous migration of things. I&amp;#039;m less of a slave to putting things back where they belong. The chairs used to have to sit at perfect right angles to the sofa, but, you know, it&amp;#039;s nice when they&amp;#039;re angled so I can look out the window or see the TV more easily. It&amp;#039;s great to loosen up. And I notice that people are more at ease when they come over because it&amp;#039;s not all too-too perfect.&amp;quot;\u2014BARRY DIXON &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve changed my art and accessories three or four times. I&amp;#039;ll find some great item and change everything in the room. I bought a huge 62-x-94-inch 19th-century oil painting that made me rethink everything in the library. An amoeba-shaped polished brass and stone coffee table by Karl Springer spelled doom for the other things in the living room. Bringing in one new piece can take a room in a whole new direction.&amp;quot;\u2014JAMES SWAN &amp;quot;It really hadn&amp;#039;t changed much at all until I recently moved. It&amp;#039;s still a big question mark about what I&amp;#039;ll do with my new home. All I know is that I want to live more casually with beautiful things. I&amp;#039;ve gotten rid of most things that I had for the last ten years and, for the moment, the emptiness is quite lovely.&amp;quot;\u2014BARBARA BARRY &amp;quot;I installed a flat-screen TV in my cabin on Long Island, but I hated how it looked, so I had bookcases built around it. It seemed like an opportune time for a cleanup and edit, and I ended up taking five carloads of bric-a-brac to the Salvation Army. I&amp;#039;m always tinkering but haven&amp;#039;t disrupted the original feel of the place, just changed a few fabrics here and there. I always say that one day I&amp;#039;m going to turn it from a fishing cabin to a modern home. But who knows what&amp;#039;s next....&amp;quot;\u2014ANTHONY BARATTA &amp;quot;My houses and style have evolved a lot \u2014 mostly because of my wife, Tatiana. The interiors now have more contrast. They&amp;#039;re richer, more textured \u2014 and much, much softer.&amp;quot;\u2014CAMPION PLATT "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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