Casual at the cottage
Design it like that, says Glen Peloso,
As we skip spring and leap straight into summer this year, the cottage becomes a favourite topic.
A classic, easy-to-maintain holiday home is the dream. Plan it that way and you’ll spend the summer being happy you gave the design some thought.
At the beginning of the season, start with a cottage purge. Your home-away-from-home should not be a drop-off spot for everything that’s no longer useful at the fulltime home. Decluttering your spaces and creating clean lines lends a look of elegance and is way easier to maintain.
Rustic design works best at a cottage since you and your guests go there to relax — even in the way you treat your surroundings.
Start at the flooring and select a wide-board plank with some natural movement to it. A hand-scraped walnut or an oak floor in a medium brown colour tends to work well. Look for a matte finish so flaws are not highlighted when the sun shines in. A maple floor, for instance, tends to have no graining so it’s easy to see everything from dust to sand. The more complex patterns of wood, the less you can see, the less you will feel the need to reach for a vacuum.
Continue that rustic theme with furniture, such as coffee tables, end table and dining tables. The more “polished” the pieces, the more they’ll require maintenance. Lots of people use pieces left over from their full-time homes but the look becomes a cobbled-together living space that’s diminished by feeling worn. Psychologically, the design is disappointing; it creates a feeling that everything needs your attention. Which is the opposite goal of going to a cottage.
When it comes to soft seating — sofas and chairs — search for pieces that will keep the work to a minimum. Choose either leather or fabric, but be aware that leather can be hot in the summer. While there’s a range of maintenance levels with leathers, the same is true of fabrics; many people erroneously believe leather is easier to care for than fabric. Sunbrella fabrics or Crypton fabrics can perform every bit as well as leathers.
Keep the sofa simple with attached-back cushions — or make it a tight-backed sofa. People tend to flop on the furniture more at the cottage and straightening the couch up can cut into your time sitting on the dock or deck. Have a couple of larger throw cushions, down-filled for greater comfort) for impromptu naps — they also make great lap desks or a place to prop your book or tablet in the evenings. Cushion covers are easily changed.
Continue the rustic feeling into the bedrooms with bed frames, night tables and dressers in reclaimed woods with the same relaxed quality as pieces in the other rooms. But make sure the mattress is new. Neither you nor your guests want to wake up feeling like you’ve slept on the lumpy floor of a tent.
Cottage bedrooms are the place to focus on quality with not only the mattresses but also the pillows and linens. Everyone will thank you for it. As well, you’re going to need a reasonable number of towels, between those used for swimming and the ones in the bathroom. Towels will be used many times a day — make that experience as pleasant as possible by getting something of a reasonable quality.
It’s work to keep the linens from getting musty while you’re away; many cottage country towns have laundries that will wash and fold for you to pick up when you return. You can get them to do the towels, as well.
Going to the cottage should mean leaving the city behind to celebrate a more natural world. So when it comes to accessorizing the interior space, be sparse. The more surfaces you have and the more clutter you acquire, the more difficult it is to quickly clean. Leave the visual interest to what’s outside the cottage windows . . . isn’t that why you drove hours to get there?
Cool nights at the cottage cry out for a fire and fireplaces offer a rustic heat, lighting and aroma. But the cleanup and, for some, risk of a cottage fire has caused many of our clients to not use their fireplaces. A new product — the Stuv fireplace — has rotating doors allowing you to go from the open flame of a regular fireplace to a closed-front stove. It solves the issues of fire risk, as well as the cleanup issue, since ashes fall into a drawer that can be pulled out and dumped.
Every appliance in the cottage should have the same low maintenance function. A separate beverage fridge allows space in the big refrigerator to be used for the food you need to stock up on to feed your family for stretches at a time.
The reality is that cottages get dirty simply from traffic in and out, dirt roads, kids, lakes and even the tiny flying things that end up dead on the floor. Not having the place look dirty allows you to relax, get out to the dock, enjoy your guest without feeling like “you have work to do.” Plan well from the start when you design your space and you will be reaching for a champagne flute far more often than a dust mop! Glen Peloso appears every two weeks in New in Homes & Condos. He is principal designer of Peloso Alexander Interiors, national design editor of Canadian Home Trends magazine and a design expert on The Marilyn Denis Show on CTV. Contact him at pelosoalexander.com, follow on Twitter @peloso1 or @glenandjamie, and on Facebook.