The front porch has compact florescent bulbs in the ceiling. They came in handy after we finished dinner and kept talking after the sun set at 9pm when Mykola pulled out a large stash of photo albums with pictures from 1992 - 1996. I'll need to ask him to digitize those images so that we can share them. 
Mykola said that he picked out all the lighting fixtures himself. He traveled around Europe, the far East and into northern Africa. No doubt he paid attention to what he liked, then found ways to get it in Ukraine. Last summer, I saw many retail outlets with home decorating goods. The selection of lighting is considerably bigger than it was just 6 years ago.Mykola said that he did not work with an architect as such, but it's interesting how he figured out how to use skylights to bring light into a large staircase. The second floor has bedrooms that all open out onto an open area around the staircase. The master bedroom as a balcony.
The fixture in the kitchen is of the same style as the fixtures over the staircase. When I asked him if he'd designed it himself, he scoffed and said that he simply picked it up in a store.
The laundry machine (which most definitely was not part of his old apartment) is in the dressing room. What a great idea. He doesn't need to schlep his laundry up and down any stairs. Of course, the appliance is the super-energy efficient European design.
Finally as someone who has renovated her apartment in New York City within the past decade, I could not resist taking a picture of the master bath and, specifically the *Happy D* model toilet. Our architect has specified this very model for our renovation. Unfortunately, we were unable to install it without doing major alternations to our Manahttan condo. It wasn't worth it. Kanish, however, in бідна Україна', built himself a whole house and put the the cool, and hip appliance right where he wanted it.
Around the free range chickens, past a few cows, down a steep decline and onto a perfectly manicured plaza of bricks. Laid out in a nice pattern, so we could park and face a house that sat far back, on the other side of a large lawn. 
A few years ago, Mykola decided to leave his television career. He told me that he 'put it on a shelf' and started to build residential buildings full-time. As we walked me around his home, I saw that he not only put his TV career on a shelf, but he built himself a shelf to hold mementos of that career. (Actually, he built several shelves in his home to showcase the trophies, certificates, photos with famous people, and microphones that he has used.)
Mykola still loves to cook and he has designed his kitchen to make it easy to prepare and to serve food. It's big enough for an eat-in kitchen, and it opens out onto a covered terrace that has a table and chairs. The day I came over, Mykola made some simple dishes for the kids to eat on the lawn, while he and I had a simple pan fried fish steak with fresh green salad on his terrace. All the greens were from his garden. Fresh-picked berries were desert. 
Dima is in elementary school. His room (he has a room!) is also light and airy. The square footage is definitely generous by Manhattan standards. His room has toys, a bed and a desk. My kids figured out how to play with the train sets pretty quickly. Dima is a student at the British International School in the center of Kyiv. He gets a ride there every day. When we visited he skipped his weekly tennis lesson so that he could entertain my daughters. I could have been having a conversation with a neighbor in the West Village.
He love to cook and he wants to have fresh vegetables. He is also a life-long resident of Ukraine, where every family who had any possibility whatsoever, carved out a scrap of land and planted their own food. Each season the family would trek out of town to the 'dacha' or the 'horod' and tend the garden. After the harvest, they're would be the obligatory fury of canning and preserving. Once the bitter grey winter settled in, you'd eat out of the jar and pull your own potatoes off your city balcony. Of course, this didn't come from some Michelle Obama/Michael Polin (GET LINK)-inspired desire boost healty eating. It was a simple, cold calculation to just be able to eat. Too many times in the last century, food was taken away by war, by famine, by purges, etc. It was simply in everyone's social DNA that you had to grow your own food (or be linked to a relative who did). The striking thing about Mykola's garden plot is that it does not take up the *entire* acerage of his lot that is not covered by a building. He built a lawn and even a playground. He put his crops in planting beds that look like flower beds. Mykola told me that he recently built a house for his elderly parents in a town nearby. They moved from a village several hundred kilometers away to be closer to their grandson. His father wanted enough land to plant potatoes. His mother wanted chickens and a goat.Mykola said no. Картопля за мною. ('I am responsible for the potatoes.") He also promised to provide his parents with milk and eggs. What has all my work been for if I can't give my parents potatoes and dairy to last the winter. He is trying to transform his father from being a substiance farmer to a gentleman farmer of leisure. He wants him to choose to garden instead of being forced to garden. 
A big piece of the side yard between the main house an the stream is handed over to a lawn. Mykola set up a table for the kids to have dinner as a picnic while the two of us ate dinner on the front patio. We could see the kids, but they were able to run around and play. In addition to a part-time governess/house keeper, and the groundskeeper, Mykola hired a driver/fixer to helps with the cooking and running the house. The evening that I was there, the driver/fixer kept an eye on the kids after the governess left, then gave us a ride back to our apartment in the center of Kyiv.
The cabana is really an outdoor kitchen. It has a charcoal or wood grill and a gas range with several burners. The blue roof matches all the other buildings on the property. It is large enough to fit a table full of adults. The walkway goes from the cabana directly to the dining room and second kitchen on the ground floor.
Mykola set up this large room for entertaining. It is clearly a substitute for either going to a restaurant or for getting guests into the private areas of the house. The table was set for 10, but you could easily add tables and chairs to get almost twice that number. He put a sink with soap at the door. It reminded me of the Soviet cafeterias of the 90s (but there was never any soap nor paper towels). Later I saw the same sort of set-up at the swanky Columbus Circle Whole Foods grocery store in Manhattan. 
Mykola put more built in bookshelves on the ground floor. He filled them with photos and objects from his archives. He works from home so I understand why he's put so much effort into decorating. It is an edited collection. Very different from the crammed shelves of apartments that I used to visit where the стінка was jammed with an entire family's books, mementos and bedding -- all in the living room.
Every house has a storage room. Perhaps the biggest indicator of the development of a middle-class in Ukraine is the emergence of stuff. Back in the day you didn't have anywhere to put your stuff. Also you were not like to have much stuff. It could be contained in your all-purpose stinka. Now, you can see stuff, buy stuff, and get stuff. That means to need to store it as well. Mykola built himself a wine cellar that has two alcoves. One is full of racks for bottles. The other side is a скад with, as he described it, the stuff that collects and is usually underfoot. He wanted a place for it, so he built it.
By the time they were designing their house, Olena and Serhij had traveled quite a bit. I had lined Serhij up with a trip to the US whe we were working together at the International Media Center. They've been to Western Europe, Asia, Africa. They collected ideas of houses that they liked and put it together to make their home.
The house is not huge. There is a nice foyer, eat in kitchen, master bedroom and 2 kids bedrooms on the first floor. The open stairs lead up to a den that is lined with portraits and awards of Oleana, the media personality. There is also a playroom and a small office, under the eaves where Solovyov has his computer set up to play video games. His father was an M-25 pilot in the Soviet air force. They travelled a lot, but Solovyov did not pass the eye exam.
Recently they planted a small garden. It is minuscule compared to what Olena and her neighbors had in Kosiv. We joked that it looked more like Michelle Obama's garden in the White House.
