At this family house, entertaining's easy because there's great flow from one room to another. Chilled wine and soft drinks are always on hand in the refrigerator, which Jim installed a foot above the floor to give youngsters quick access to frozen treats in the bottom freezer. The long kitchen table—a secondhand piece that Jim topped with heart-pine planking—seats up to 12. "You just pull it out a bit, and the room's still huge," he says. Three double doors along the front of the house encourage folks to spill onto
the porch, where neighbors riding by on bicycles often stop to chat. Huge Key West shutters and floor-to-ceiling porch curtains allow the space to do double duty as a sleeping nook. "The little guys can sleep outside, and that's just supercool for them," Jim says. The grandkids also love to hide out in two built-in beds tucked upstairs beneath dormer windows. 
photography: Dana Gallagher
Upstairs, children love to sleep and play together in the built-in beds with operable curtains. Drawers below provide extra storage. |
Throughout the cottage, the interior walls are white, while the window trim, floors, and ceilings pop with hues of sky blue, cherry red, and seafoam green. Bright pillows, patchwork quilts, and Kurdish rugs also add vivid color; plus, their patterns tolerate tremendous wear and tear. All the beds are covered with washable quilts, "so it isn't a problem if the dog gets on the covers or if somebody drops some M&M's," Linda says.Historic details quite literally fill every corner of the cottage. "There's no drywall in the entire house," says Jim, who used No. 1 select clear pine for the ceiling and walls and 200-year-old planks of knotty No. 2 pine for the floor. Lighting includes refurbished gaslights from the early days of electricity. Even the objects on the walls have historic value. Jim and Linda decorated the downstairs hallway with old photos showing their grandparents and great-grandparents when they were children. Then Linda added contemporary shots of her own children and grandchildren to the collection, tinting the images a traditional sepia tone on her computer. The photos are displayed in identical frames, and Linda labeled each picture so visitors can identify who's shown where and when. "This is a family place," Linda says, and on the downstairs walls "you can see the family thread." With its lazy rituals and its gentle romance, Jim and Linda's WaterColor cottage entices visitors to return. Jim knows that feeling well, of course: "I've always wanted to go back to that old house at Tybee . . . and now it feels like I can." | 
We wanted a place where children could jump up and down 
