Reconciled Differences

Before: His hard-edged chairs and modern art clash with her traditional furniture.

The problem: Eve Feuer, the style director of Fitness magazine, and her husband, Ron, a businessman, have been married eight years and have two daughters. They were grown-ups when they married, with different ideas about what's beautiful and comfortable and two apartments full of stuff to prove it. They'd been living in his digs until recently, when they moved into a new home—and swept the discussion, if you will, under his rug.

"This is not what I would have done if I had started from scratch," says Eve, gesturing at her patterned sofa, his modern chairs, her delicate family photographs in a pile on a shelf, his edgy art stacked behind the sofa, the Oriental rugs crowded together on the floor. But who ever starts from scratch? You've got yours and he's got his, and you try to fit the pieces together. That's called marriage.