Inside Nate Berkus & Jeremiah Brent’s Portuguese Farm | Open Door | Architectural Digest

Jer, when is the goat leaving the kitchen? Hey, A.D. Welcome to Portugal. Things look a little bit different around here. Same pommos, different home. I'm really excellent with landscaping and I have this concept that there should be rows and rows and rows of lavender. Yeah, you certainly didn't fight me on it. No. For like six months. No, I didn't, he didn't have to hear, but lavender brings bees and all the things. I was wrong. If the bees go, so do we, folks. I won't get choked up about the inside of this house, but I do get choked up when I talk about the outside because when we bought this farm, it was a ruin and everything was really sick and had not been taken care of. And we had a friend come back who actually showed us the house and he said to us, you brought her back to life. Our family planted a lot of this lavender. Everything in this space reminds me of everything that we've put into it. And for whatever reason, everything that we've done, everything that we try to achieve for our family, this farm feels like the best representation of that success. That's Nuno and that's Marta. Hi guys. And without them, there would be no farm. Throughout the property, there's these old wells that really, when you take a wood cork out, they actually water the entire field. This one was not being used. And so we created our dream pool. And this was my design too, right? Yeah. I'm really awesome with outside stuff. If you guys ever need help, just by all means, call me. He definitely didn't fight me about the pattern, didn't fight me about the material, but do you know what he does do really well? Enjoy it when it's done. Oh, there goes the sheep. Oh man. Look it, they froze when I yelled at them. Hi guys. I didn't realize that sheepish came from sheep. Because they are very nervous about everything. There's a baby. Do you see the baby? This is the first home that we renovated. We lovingly call it the lavender house. It's a little two bedroom house. It has the most exquisite views. You wake up to the sunrise right over this ridge. And if you look past this way, I built a house for my mother and she lives here full-time now with her husband. What's really beautiful about this home is at any given time, there's always three generations here. I am Portuguese. My parents are Portuguese. My mom always talks about stories of coming back here and living here someday. Living here, you feel like intrinsically connected to a vibration, like something much deeper, something older. Every day you wake up here and your only job here is to nurture the land. And there's so much beauty to that. There's so much purpose in that. It feeds your soul in such a unique and special way. You know, we were walking with our daughter the other day and she was talking about how underneath these arches is where she wants to get married someday, which could bring me to tears. I think people would think that it's the homes that have like this feeling or this spirit to them, but it's really the land. I love this place. So when we bought this house, this room was terrifying. It was stone floors. There were troughs everywhere. It was a full barn. All of these rooms were so gross. Normally in this architecture, the animals lived downstairs and the people lived upstairs. So all of these rooms on the first floor you're seeing were for the animals, basically. So when we decided to do this renovation, this space was really about creating a really warm, intimate TV space. I'll say it. Sometimes after chasing wild peacocks that are in heat, you want to watch housewives. One thing that's important to note is that all of these doors were original. So in Portugal, when they remove like centuries of paint off of wood, they burn it. And so this person with like a torch was burning the paint off and then hand scraping everything. So to see the wood underneath and the original iron hardware is so cool. I think the house definitely feels, for me, visually different than anything we've done. Show them your fat bird. This is a big deal, guys. So we were at the Paris flea market a couple of weeks ago, and we came around the corner and I saw this. And if there was ever a piece of furniture that I felt was me, it would be this beautifully sculpted bird. What's interesting about this kitchen is really the transformation that it went through. Originally, this was where they would milk the livestock. There was a drain in the center. It smelled like it had had quite a few experiences, but this space is so special. It's really, I think, the heartbeat of this house. The chairs are Robert Mallet Stephens from 1930 in like the original chipping paint. We love that. I love that I'm like the heartbeat. I know, and I'm like, guess what we found at auctions everywhere? You make everything here. Yeah, it's fun. I bake all the time for the kids. These doors are usually open. You can hear them splashing outside on the pool. But when you come here, they've always turned completely down, and it really becomes about the art of living. What's exciting is when the flowers pop up that weren't there the day before, or you hear the peacocks screaming at each other because it's mating season. And I find that our whole family, not just the two of us, but the children as well, our body clocks start to shift a little bit, and we start waking up kind of when we want to, and we go to bed. Well, you do, for sure. Yeah, I definitely do. Also, the stone that you see behind. Well, everywhere. Yeah, we only use local. I love that we're talking about how much we love local materials as we stand in front of a French oven. Well, you can't have it all, okay? Some things the French do really beautifully, and the ovens. I mean, they do a lot beautifully, for the record. Don't come for me. So, everything changes when you come up the stairs in these homes, and this is really common here. Obviously, you have the height of the ceiling, like the plaster work, which was restored. There were people with paintbrushes, like making sure that they didn't change the original finish, which you can still see. The tapestry, we inherited. This was originally here. This space is really like where we come together at night, where the kids read a book, or we play games on the floor, and it kind of acts as like this connective space between all the bedrooms. Speaking of children, let me show you our kids' spaces. You might want to zoom in on this spot. We keep hostages. If anyone knows... I swear to God, she's happy. All right, come into Poppy's room. The only thing that gets him going is vacuuming bugs on the ceiling. Interestingly enough, our daughter had a really clear perspective on what she wanted to do. She kept the original floors. She wanted to keep all the original furniture. This bed was here. This armoire was here, which we painted. We obviously added a new bathroom, but this was all her. She had a color she wanted. The funny thing about our daughter is she actually thinks that we have no taste. I think it's good. If she had her way, she'd literally live like Marie Antoinette. She thinks that we don't understand what we're doing. She thinks we have terrible taste, that everything we pick out is really ugly. She likes crusty French, Louis XVI style. That's her jam. Good chance she's going to end up like Joan Rivers. I'm not really sure. I hope so. And then over here is Oscar Michael Brent Berkus' room. What? And a small child. What are you doing? Dude. Okay, so Oscar, tell me if I give a good description of your room for you, okay? Oscar wanted it to feel like he was living in the clouds. And so we have wallpaper that he approved on the walls, so he feels like he's in the clouds. He's got all of his very important installations, Legos everywhere. And he collects pottery. He like looks around and tries to find the pieces that went with each other. So this was on his windowsill, but he really gets excited. He definitely has inherited that maximalist lifestyle. Let's just put it that way. Their grandparents who live here on the farm had a treasure hunt for the kids with clues hidden all over the farm a few days ago. And these are all the treasures that they won. I actually shouldn't even be touching this because he puts this in. I just want to say for the record, I just got in trouble because this has been edited and he was not happy about it being edited. Oh yeah, we normally live as gold coins. There's gold coins, there's fidgets, there's everything. It's objects everywhere. Always an installation as we call it. Did you give him this? I sure did. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a lava lamp. And I had three. I got them all from Hot Topic and I'm not ashamed to say it. Well, he came a long way from Hot Topic, babe. I think if I had to kind of put together a visual representation of like our taste versus our son, it would be this beautiful tree painting and then this Lego. Oh, that's where the coins are. Well, he's holding some coins. Can you guys see? He's holding chocolate coins. Oscar doesn't actually like the chocolate, but he likes the gold. Go figure. So this used to be the formal dining room. Yep. So in these homes, you see the ledge that goes around the perimeter. This is all the original millwork, all the original molding, but the dishes, the good dishes would have been leaning against this room all the way around. Maybe someday we'll like start a collection of that. It's like potteries. More stuff. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah, I just thought of something else we can look for. Why don't you and Oscar just start collecting some rare dishes? I just need some gold coins. What I love in this room, again, is the contrast of eras and design styles and it works. It's very comfortable and I feel like visually represents us. And one thing that I really do have to show you guys, so this was actually the family that built this farm 400 years ago. Obviously we kept that because why would you not? We are in truly the center of nowhere, which is what we love about it. But with that comes a lot of complexities around materials. I don't know how many calls we had where I was trying to explain a scallop. How do you say scallop in Portuguese? Somebody knows. What? There's a lot of this. It's also so cool because like the two windows, which are arched, are on the same axis. So you see Spain in that direction and then you just see land on that direction. That rent-a-car is not usually here. Did you see that? Well, my God. Bathroom? Sure. Okay. There used to be a third bedroom, which we absorbed to create a full primary bathroom as well as like a small dressing room. This is a stone tub. It's a perfect spot for it. These are the local marble, put it out of the scallop detail. Escudura. I know you think that that's like my arousal palette. I say that's Nate's arousal palette. It's not. Isn't it though? Look closely. Originally in this house, this was where you made all of the meat and that's not a metaphor. Where they made the sausage, actually. That's now the sausage. What's really beautiful about this room is the scale of the fireplace. It's what we love the most. You can see actually, look, this is the size of the fireplace. The second this home was finished, we've had, I don't even know how many dinner parties in here. They're always very late, very rowdy and very over-served, which is what this house is supposed to be about, coming together. A lot of the pieces in here are things that we inherited when we actually purchased the house. So I do want to show you guys something I think is really cool. So a lot of the pots that you see around the farm were original to the farm. And this one, we have no idea how old it is, but it was common for the artist to sign the pot. So this one says Jose Pereira and that's who made this, which is sort of amazing. This is wood. Shall we go outside? I just want to save for the record because I'm obviously obsessed with landscaping now. This tree is not dead. It's a walnut tree and it always comes back late. So she's on her way. She's coming, but she takes her time. It looks dead. It's not dead. It's budding. Now you're just being mean. He didn't mean it. Perfect shot. I believe that was Peacock for **** you. So this pool, we kind of lovingly refer to as the kid's pool. They swim in it almost every day. They're always splashing in it. I could be cooking in the kitchen and I look out and they're always in the pool. We have several of these on the farm and these were the reservoirs that the channels all connect to. And that's what we actually spent the first two years restoring is all the water channels that kind of move throughout the land. It's almost like veins. And you always hear that kind of beautiful sound of water. Sorry, babe. This is making me crazy. What can I say? Every family's got one. So this path for the record, we did not name it. It's called Lover's Lane, but we did just completely restore it. And this is all actually a scent garden. So everything would bloom and smell really beautiful. This is what we walked into, obviously not in this condition. And this iron structure is one of four on the farm. Yeah. It's just like this, this is like the real history of this place. I cannot describe to you, and I'm not sure a video or photo will ever really do it justice, what it feels like to live somewhere where you always hear the running water and you always hear birds. It's truly super magical. Right Chico? Hi dad, what are you doing? Hi pops, we are talking to some friends. We'll be back in like five minutes. So the one rule around this house is that if you leave, you just have to take a walkie talkie with you so we can find you. These used to be statues, but they were fake. So they're gone. The little gardener guy, remember? How could I forget? He had like a basket and a sun hat. He was like this. So he was gay. So this we did not know existed until we started cleaning up and cutting back the plants and maintaining it. But look at this beautiful altar. So this is like its own personal church. This is St. Antonio. Who's all over the farm. Really beautiful about this is that the water comes in, it comes up to like mid-calf and you sit down with your feet in the water. The water's a little dark for me. I like a little like chlorine thing moving around. That's my worst nightmare. We have owned this home for six years. We have no idea still where the water comes from. What did you find now? That's my wheat netting. Don't eat that. Should we go? No. That's yucky. That's not for you. That's gross. It's plastic. You can't do that. That's yucky. You can't eat that. Where are our goat wrangling hostages? Unbelievable. America's decorator. All right, AD, I can't thank you enough for coming to check out our home. Thank you so much for spending some time with us and our zoo. Now we have to go wrangle children, goats, sheep, and wild peacock. So we'll see you later. What do you think he's doing? Being a goat. Bye. Chico, you're a really good boy. I really love him. No. As a personal challenge for Jeremiah and spiders, I want to know what would I have to give you to stick your hand in this old pot? Do you want to know something really beautiful? Come on, Jerry. This is actually jasmine that's climbing all the way across. It's going to smell so beautiful at night, especially when I'm here single. A little closer together. Too gay. We're too gay? Not me. Look how uncomfortable I am. Oh yeah, you really are. Will you stick your hand in this spider pot? That's why I like girl's voice. That's really effective. All the women just swooned. Yeah, I know.