|
On a steamy august afternoon in Dallas, when all I wanted was lunch, my boss pointed to a decaying wooden cottage behind a gnarly chain-link fence. He turned to me and uttered six fateful words: "You've got to buy that house."
I valued his vision—he's a gifted designer—but for a split second I also thought this might be a disaster. The place was yellow—every wall and every bit of trim—not a soft, appealing yellow but the precise fluorescent shade of a cheap bookstore highlighter. The grass in the front yard was dead. The front porch was filled with chipped and broken terra-cotta pots, and the porch door was fitted with rotten siding that didn't quite match the rest of the house. 
photography: Tria Giovan
Heather found old streetlamps, rewired them, and hung them in the
kitchen above a new concrete countertop. She discovered the old chemistry
lab stools in a friend's garage and had them sandblasted and sealed. |
But the eight crape myrtle trees in the yard were blooming a vivid shade of hot pink, and I quickly lost my mind. I walked up to the owner, who had already laid down sheets of plywood decking and was preparing to lay wall-to-wall carpeting, and said: "Stop everything. I'd like to buy this house. As is." Though I'd spent years working for noted design firms, I never imagined that I'd spend the next four years renovating, scrubbing, and rebuilding the cottage—only to leave it behind when I became associate style editor at Cottage Living. This will be my first Christmas away from that house, but Cottage Living photographers captured the spirit of the place before my canine companion, Lillie, and I moved out, and we'd like to share our story with you. | 
You can never have enough beaded board 
