Idea House Cottage - coming this Spring!

I've always loved cottages.  Their intimate size and quirky details.  The best ones are tucked away and not so obvious to passers by.  And I just happen to have one:  The darling little, 2-story wood house up by our 1889 brick home.  We painted it a suble blue-green by Farrow & Ball several years ago, so it now melds quietly into the lush greenery surrounding it.  You may visited and never even noticed it.  

But it's there.  And it's where Chartreuse & co began.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Growing up, this building had the descriptive moniker of The Bike House.  It was, as you probably guessed, where my grandparents kept the bikes, croquet, and badmitton.  It was where the garden furniture lived during the winter.  I believed for half my life that it's floor was dirt.

Yet even while filled with outdoor playthings, the house had a charm for me.  The first time I recall going upstairs, it pleased me to find beds up there.  It had been the living quarters of field hands through the 1950s.  Though the furniture was battered and forgotten, these remnants of a living space made it clear that the Bike House had once been home to more than just lawn games and bikes.  Even as a little girl, this discovery set me dreaming of what a wonderful house it could be. 

And so, in 2001, when Chip, the girls, and I moved here, the Bike House was high on my list of projects.  Karen (@thegraphicsfairy), my friend and partner-in-crime, and I dreamed of making it our own little shop.  But first it had to be cleared of decades of very grungy use.

Just dragging everything out was a chore.  We found a rough, heavy wood cabinet which had obviously been built INSIDE the building, as there was no way to fit it out the door.  We discorvered one of the original built-in cabinets from out of the main house kitchen (it had been renovated in the 1970s).  And we found two structural surprises:  1) the floor is concrete, not dirt, and 2) there was a whole extra space beyond the back wall, which never had drywall or any kind of finishing.  It, quite frankly, had a Silence of the Lambs feel to it.  So we just closed the door on that space and focused on the remainder of the first floor. 

It's almost miraculous what some scrubbing, a coat of paint, and the addition of beautiful things can do for a space.

By May 2002, we were ready to hold our first tag sale.  And we were hooked.

Eventually we fixed up the second floor, too.  But by the time we expanded into the Barn, Karen had moved on to her Graphics Fairy calling, and the little cottage devolved back to the neglected, shed-like status you saw in the YouTube video. 

Yet that video opened my eyes to what the structure was crying out for.  And within 8 months of that recording, we'd ripped out all the old drywall from the walls and ceiling, added insulation, installed fresh drywall on the walls and a glass front door.  We opted to leave the ceiling exposed - such a great look, and set up the Chartreuse & co offices in our little cottage. 

We even cut through to the creepy back room, and it's now painted Farrow & Ball's oh-so-soothing Pink Ground. The now-charming space houses our breakroom with the old built-in cabinet (painted F&B's Pointing). 

Fast forward several years and I'm finding I prefer my home office or being in the Barn itself, and so the Bike House isn't being utilized much anymore. 

So what's it's next life?

Lately I've been re-visiting my roots - emphasizing the unique and vintage, drawing inspiration from design magazines and travel (like my recent trip to NYC).  And the itch to fully decorate a home, different from my own, has become too strong to ignore.  Thus the Bike House turned Chartreuse & co office is now being reborn as the Idea House Cottage.

Three times a year we'll be completely re-decorating it, and it'll emerge as our design crush of the season - I'm so excited I can hardly stand it:

     - Spring:  March ( though this first one may be April instead...)

     - Fall:  August

     - Holiday:  mid-November through mid-December

This first Spring Vision has the quintessential English cottage-in-the-woods as its inspiration - here are a few of the pin-board Inspo ideas for you to contemplate:

We want to bring you along on our design journey, and share the full reveal with you.  Because the space is small (and will be fully decorated) we can only fit a handful of you through at any one time, so the reveal will be ticketed on Eventbrite.  Tickets include an intimate tour of the cottage, upstairs and down, and dibs on the goodies included in the space.  

Stay tuned for full details.

Thanks for reading!

-- Virginia