House Tours
House tour: Cozy family cottage
Images: Donna Griffith
House Tours
House tour: Cozy family cottage
When it comes to cottage style, having the latest finishes and fanciest fabrics is nice, sure – but embracing tradition and family togetherness is even better.
It’s not the size of the cottage that counts – or the luxury. Cottage living is all about spending time with family and friends, following tradition and building memories. A case in point is the homey 589- square-foot two-bedroom cottage in Ontario’s Kawartha Lakes that’s been in Style at Home editor-in-chief Erin McLaughlin’s family for generations.
Now owned by Erin’s elder sister, Alexis McLaughlin, the cottage was built in the 1940s by their late grandfather on land he bought and split in half with his best friend. It started as a simple one-room cabin, but over the next decade more space was added as comfort demanded and time and budget permitted. The finishes followed, including a dropped ceiling and linoleum floor (“This was the ’50s after all,” says Erin). In the late ’90s, Erin’s grandpa passed away, and her dad, a former architect, took over the cottage. He set about beautifying it by knocking down walls and stripping it back to the studs (au revoir, dropped ceiling and linoleum floor). And it was left like that – half renovated – for several years, until Alexis started spending summer vacations there with her husband, Hugues Gagnon, and their kids, Justin, 12, and Marieve, 10.
Alexis took up the cottage’s cause and turned to Erin – makeover maven and decorating diva – to bring it into fashion. Under the sisters, the rustic (“even ramshackle,” says Erin with a laugh) cottage saw its rebirth from dark and dank into a gleaming white post-and-plank place bathed in light. The decor itself was pared back to the basics. “We got rid of the superfluous stuff and kept the items that mean the most, then we painted everything white,” says Erin. The sisters also placed particular importance on honouring the original quirks introduced by their grandpa: the mismatched window casings, the doors he made from scratch and the seams in the hardwood floors that reveal the old layout. “To me, this is the ultimate of what a cottage should be,” says Erin. “You can tell there’s something special here, even if you can’t name it.”
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