Southern Comfort
Luxe Magazine
Perched along Biscayne Bay in Surfside, there's a community of midcentury modern houses basking in the South Florida sun; the one baring the for sale sign that caught the attention of Paul and Joyce Scharfer. However, it was in need of some tender, restorative care, which was more than fine with them.
The Scharfers, avid collectors of 1950s furnishings, wanted to brand this house with their personal aesthetic and make it their own. They were trading a Manhattan high-rise apartment and a Hamptons summer house for Florida so their sons, 12 year-old Jacob and 10-year-old Jesse, could be closer to relatives and learn to enjoy the great outdoors.
Not wanting to fully leave the Northeast behind, the couple enlisted New York-based interior design Abigail Shachat to both preserve and enchance the mod domicile they acquired, originally designed and built in '56 by renowned Miami architect Don Reiff. 'We wanted to bring the house back to where it was when it was built,' Shachat says. "The challenge was to create a strong relationship between the indoors and outdoors"
Not wanting to fully leave the Northeast behind, the couple enlisted New York-based interior design Abigail Shachat to both preserve and enchance the mod domicile they acquired, originally designed and built in '56 by renowned Miami architect Don Reiff. 'We wanted to bring the house back to where it was when it was built,' Shachat says. "The challenge was to create a strong relationship between the indoors and outdoors"
