A great marriage is not when the "perfect couple" comes together. It's when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.
- Dave Meurer, humorist

What happens when your beloved place suddenly has to be his, too? Or hers? Or you're the one crashing into another life, and you aren't so crazy over the mounted moose over the fireplace.

Not so far-fetched. Just ask Hudson designer Pamela Bayer. The native New Yorker had lived alone for years before marrying Ralph. Their divergent tastes and the pragmatic issue of physically fitting two lives into one home could have wreaked havoc - but didn't.

Downsize mercilessly, Bayer recommends. "There are things you own that are important, and things that aren't."

Work from a floor plan. Measure the naked space and the dimensions taken by your possessions. Then start haggling. Do you really need two pit couches?

Now you're ready to make your decorating appease and please both of you.

"Go toward eclectic," says Bayer of melding traditional with contemporary. Find common ground, much like focusing on the shared moderate views of a liberal and a conservative.

For instance, "Ralph had some very traditional prints that weren't totally to my taste. So I mounted them in white to help contemporize them. We both love the effect."

Bayer also took a vintage sleigh bed and modernized it with bedding. She recommends similar touches, such as "giving an old table new life" by brightly painting a scratched wood top.

Compromise is the rule of the day in the Bayer household. Their Hudson home is, after all, a renovated barn. While it's vintage and rustic on the outside, the twenty-first century warmly intrudes within.

There's a marriage designed to last.

- DS

Chapter by David Searls