A 17-FOOT SOFA TELLS YOU A LOT about a person. In this case, what it’s saying is that Dawn McKenna, a Chicago-based real estate advisor who chose one for her Naples, Florida, house, loves to host a party. When envisioning the living room of her waterfront home, McKenna “wanted 10 people to fit comfortably,” she says. And she knew they could on her vintage sectional, now covered in a crowd-friendly performance fabric. “When we laid out the room, I walked the steps to make sure it would fit,” she recalls. And if red wine spills all over the white cushions? Says McKenna, “It is what it is.”
When it came to the house itself, what captivated McKenna wasn’t what the space was, but what it could be. A relic from…