by Kate Jonuska
an HGTV star and her family make a cross-country move from LA to a farmhouse
LEANNE FORD and her young family moved from Los Angeles to a historic farmhouse and estate in Pennsylvania on a quest to slow down and spread out. Their new lifestyle is lovingly documented in the photos and ideas in “The Slow Down: For the Love of Home.”
Many HGTV viewers are familiar with Leanne and the Ford family on the screen. Still, readers of this new book get to dive into their personal lives as they made this larger house with a long history into a stylish space ideal for the slower life her family craved. Certainly, respecting a home more than a century old through a renovation required consideration and intention more than speed.
“Sometimes you just need to take the stand-back approach—the less we touch, the better,” Ford writes, explaining that rather than replacing the old, the new and the old can coexist.
“Mixing our life with the lives of those who have called this home before us. With history, and a future, and the NOW all mixing together,” she says. “Hence why I love old buildings. It’s the soul stew they naturally create.”
Like stew, Ford’s style, as shown in this photo-heavy book, is rich but rustic, elegant but not fussy, and primarily constructed in a palette of white on white. “Nothing is safe from me and my can of white paint,” Ford jokes, but the artful layering of those whites with refinished original woodwork, terra cotta tile and other natural materials proves the concept sound.
Expect lots of inspirational catalog-ready photos—much of her new home’s furniture comes from Ford’s recently designed line for Crate & Barrel. However, the heartfelt advice and candid family pics, many taken by a toddler, found inside “The Slow Down” create a design book with remarkably balanced substance and style.
