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(The uncle of one of her friends hunts the reptiles in Ohio, makes turtle soup and then sends the shells to Polly.) It's also the sort of house in which you could feel comfortable enough to rifle through the refrigerator without permission. Maybe this is because the interiors Polly has created are pulled together in an edgy yet comfortable black and white palette. Or maybe it's just the Denhams themselves.

After doing what Polly calls the "Shippan shuffle," switching from one house to the next on Ocean Drive (one of the most coveted locations in the area), the couple finally decided to build from scratch two years ago. For a husband and wife who both specialize in homes, this was a recipe for success.

"Everything else we've ever done has been a renovation or just a paint-and-fluff-and-stick-up-some-new-wallpaper-and-be-done kind of place," Polly says. "For this house, I got everything I wanted."

Of all her collections, her most coveted may be the tear sheets of ideas she's amassed over the years. Using those, and drawing from her experience at an Atlanta design firm and a New York fabric showroom, she devised some clever looks in her home: an urn converted into a sink; a family room mantel made of wood that was once used in Europe to grow mushrooms on and a metal awning that seems to float over the front door.

If she didn't see it on a tear sheet, Polly might have found it on the side of the road. That mushroom mantel began as a big piece of wood on a roadside in Wilton. The zebra throw rugs were found in a parking lot in California.

Polly and Mark also wanted plenty of arches and French doors—there are 10 sets on the first floor. Finally, Polly wanted old, wide plank floors. "We got a quote from someone locally and my husband had to be resuscitated," Polly recalls.