Inside John Derian’s enchanting seaside home in Cape Cod

I wasn't quite sure what I was gonna do

with the renovation.

And when my friends came for Easter,

they're like, We love that you're keeping

these yellow walls and purple floors.

And I was like, Am I?

And then I was like, I guess, I am.

[lively music]

[waves crashing]

I'm from Massachusetts.

So as a kid we came to the Cape for summers.

In 1982, I worked here for the summer in an inn

and then I just kept coming back.

I didn't come back for five years,

and I was on Nantucket and I came to visit a friend.

It was like a rainy day and this house

had a for sale sign on it.

So I wasn't looking, I hadn't been here in five years

and I thought, Wow, what a great house.

I guess I do have a thing for columns

and sort of Greek revival architecture.

I just loved the setup, that it was still intact,

that it had all this original detail.

I do feel like in a weird way the house found me.

[lively music]

The house was built in 1789

for a sea captain named Captain Small,

and I'm the third owner.

It went from his family to this other family in town

and then, I got it from them.

The wallpapers are probably mid-20th century,

but they're so old looking,

and they look a little older than that.

I decided to keep them just for the charm.

Also the floors are called the Cape Cod floor,

which is I think like a faux stone thing.

And then there's all these sort of like,

funny sets of doors in the house

and the doors are very thin.

For a little while it was a rooming house,

people could sort of stay in them.

We eat in this room a lot.

We play games in this room a lot.

It's amazing how many people we can squeeze in here.

We don't have AC, but it's pretty breezy.

It's well heated, so in the winter it's warm,

it's all season.

It's nice when the fires are going in the house too.

This room is the probably original room of the house

that has this sort of fancier fireplace.

The walls are covered in like a sea shell

and horse hair plaster.

That was a combination that was most popular

here in the Cape.

And this whole wall too had wallpaper,

but it was buckling.

So we have what's behind all the walls

and wallpaper is this slating.

But it was kinda pretty so we just left it.

A lot of the rooms have these sort of double doors,

but it is fun to have this, because you can,

you know, if you want.

Actually these three pieces of furniture

are a piece that I got in France that we then had copied,

and I have a furniture line with Cisco Brothers.

It's all handmade in North Carolina.

[lively music]

I don't really have any family history of interiors

or antiques or anything.

It's just kind of something I developed.

My sister would take me to flea markets

and that's where I kind of got the bug.

We lived in an old house growing up,

but my dad basically he lowered the ceilings

and put paneling up and took out all the molding.

But even as a kid I was like,

Why are you taking that down?

Somehow I became this person that likes old things,

but doesn't really know how it happened.

[lively music]

I was always crafting things too,

crafting and collecting,

and I'm still kind of crafting and collecting.

And these are all funny, weird shell things.

My sister was in Florida, there's these great divers

that harvest these base sponges,

which grow back, not hurting anyone.

She sent me one and that kinda led to me

getting more sponges.

And then the things that are over here on that table

are kind of organic materials, but sailor related.

This is like a 19th century sailor's knot.

This is a hand forged chain.

They're just sort of weird and wonderful things.

These two paintings that I got in Paris,

they're 17, 18th century and this scale is so crazy,

like who commissioned to have these giant portraits

of pets made but I'm happy to have them.

What's great about this kitchen, and it was funny,

'cause I found this pretty fast,

when I was thinking,

What could I put in the middle of the room?

When we have guests, it's fun 'cause we can all be working

and making things or serving.

And then inevitably, we're always in the kitchen.

So it's great to have a sofa in the kitchen

and sometimes it is like a cooking show,

because you are talking to people and you're making stuff.

And this cake has been in the house

on this thing for 16 years.

I don't know why. [chuckles]

But we spend most of our time on this side of the house.

The back of the house isn't as easy to get to,

and also it's not as close to the kitchen, so.

So I had the opportunity to have a shop, so I thought,

Well, you know, maybe I'll have a shop here.

It's behind the house, so it's not that intrusive.

A lot of people sometimes don't know

that the shop and the house are connected.

Even shoppers will be like, Oh, where do you live?

I'm like, That's my house.

But then I was really pleasantly surprised

at the amount of people that found it and shop here.

It's definitely not on the main road.

It's off a side street.

And it was just sort of a way to, you know,

continue to share all the things that I love and my world.

[lively music]

So this wallpaper was like this when I came,

and we just sort of left it.

But you can also see somehow the shadows

of the little bridges get repeated.

It still shows up on the walls.

This may all fall off someday.

I had this idea to do like a skeleton.

[latch clanks]

See, doesn't that you need it?

My friend Paul Lee made this.

He's British, a very talented person.

When guests come, there's always little things left

because everyone likes to collect shells and things,

but then they leave them. [chuckles]

[lively music]

My friend Jeanette Farrier, she makes bed covers

out of antique vintage Kantha throws.

It's kind of amazing,

and then they're all hand stitched together.

Selling her things for many years,

we decided to create a little collection together

and this is one of them.

Yeah, this bathroom was a kind of weird,

horrible 70's thing that was leaking

and I just felt bad for the house.

So the door was here and we moved it here

and made this a little bit brighter.

So it then accidentally created a nook.

And this was an 18th century sofa that I got at auction

that became part of the collection too.

This is an instructive wall chart.

Probably had a rod and it was for this classroom.

Maybe it's an amoeba or something.

It looks almost like an octopus.

I found it at a flea market.

It's funny, people do gravitate here and hang out.

So it's nice.

Steven and I took the back bedroom just because it was quiet

and it was kind of like,

we're in the maid's quarters, basically.

We have a little world back there

and then the rest of the house is out front

that we just sort of have for friends when they come.

[lively music]

Even though I'm not supposed to be working when I'm here,

because it's my holiday, I do have a studio.

I make decoupage.

Sometimes it's like one image, it is one tray.

But when I do 3D things, it's multiple pieces.

If we have it in the collection for a year or so,

we may have overcut.

So a lot of this is leftover stuff.

So I'm just, basically, kind of recycling.

These masks came from this German dealer.

We've done many photo shoots with all these guys.

[lively music]

The other thing about the house

is that it has a lot of sun on this side.

So the geraniums are very happy here

and people think I have a green thumb

and a geranium expert and I'm not.

What's cool about the house is that

it's kind of the real deal.

I feel like I do talk to it.

Like when I leave I say thank you

just 'cause I feel like we're meant to be together

'cause it definitely is my world.

[lively music] [waves crashing]