A Country French Kitchen and Dining Room in Glen Cove, New York

The kitchen is what sold Dean Yoder and his husband Jonathan Grimm on this 1910 Dutch colonial before they had even stepped inside.

Peering through the back window of a house they were told had once been a boarding house, Dean saw a kitchen that seemed to go on forever — an eighth the size of it would have swallowed the tiny galley in their previous home.

They decided on the spot they had to have it, closed in 28 days and paid cash. Dean had spent part of his life in California, where the prevailing aesthetic was 18th-century French country, and he'd always dreamed of a kitchen like this one.

A favorite cupboard cabinet anchors the space, and the backsplash behind the stove is made entirely from rocks the couple dug out of their own backyard — Jonathan assembled it, and cleverly hid an outlet behind a single stone so it disappears completely.

Dean collects dishes with what he cheerfully calls a terrible habit: five sets here, six more in the next room, and all of them in regular rotation. Some are China patterns he and Jonathan designed themselves around a seaside theme, with a different creature from the ocean on every single plate. Other sets came from Jonathan's mother, who assembled service for sixteen a plate at a time through a grocery store promotion.

There's continental 800 silver in the Rococo taste, Georgian sterling, and a very special piece stamped JPM — it belonged to J.P. Morgan, whose private train once stopped a few blocks from this house. The adjoining dining room is where Dean says the magic happens, and he means it commercially as well as socially: almost every client they've ever had came from a dinner party, directly or otherwise.

The ceiling is copied from an English castle, and a lamp from New York's Park Plaza Hotel hangs above a table set with an old church door mounted nearby as art. They entertain almost every weekend — simple stews for close friends, full French or Russian service when they're putting on the dog.