It was eight years past when Miss Lillian and Mr. Phillip first made one another’s acquaintance in the bustling, sawdust-laced confines of a most peculiar establishment: a three-person cabinetry shop possessed of a cantankerous CNC machine, an unrelenting schedule, and not a single shred of chill.

Miss Lillian, a designer of kitchens and orchestrator of complex machine logic, found herself entangled in daily disputes with Mr. Phillip, the cabinetmaker tasked with bringing her visions to life. Their professional pairing was, from the outset, fraught with calamity.

They could not — would not — agree on how to cut a circle, let alone an entire kitchen.

Their disagreements, while perhaps appearing petty to the casual observer, were nothing short of operatic. Truly, there is no one on this earth more exquisitely skilled at ruffling the other’s feathers than these two — a pair of chickens most ill-tempered and inconveniently matched.

At one point, Mr. Phillip even succeeded in having Miss Lillian dismissed from her post. (For precisely one week. Rude.)

But lo, dear reader — the line between contempt and companionship is a perilously thin one, often drawn in pencil and smudged by time. In the crucible of shared frustration and relentless troubleshooting, a most unexpected transformation occurred: respect took root. Collaboration followed. And slowly, like the soft unfurling of a blueprint left too long in the sun, affection crept in.

Miss Lillian departed for Chicago to pursue interior design of a more rarefied sort, whilst Mr. Phillip remained behind. For a time. Yet magnetic forces — invisible, inexorable — pulled them back together. He arrived. He stayed. He built something new.

Together, they traded city grime for antique charm and the company of a stately Norfolk Pine wedged uncomfortably in the backseat of their car. They settled in Red Hook, New York, where old homes whisper and the air tastes of moss and ambition.

Now they reside in a modest red brick house in the Hudson Valley, where they continue to bicker (lovingly) about circles and cabinets, and build a life stitched together with sawdust, sketches, and love.

And on the one-year anniversary of that leap of faith, they shall marry — proving once and for all that from the ashes of chaos, love rooted in friendship, collaboration and respect may bloom.

Travel

The Saint Paul Hotel

InterContinental Saint Paul Riverfront, an IHG Hotel