Sunday By The Sea 2

It's still the best beach weather of the season, and we can sneak in another glorious Sunday by the sea. Today we are visiting the home of a very popular and sweet guy. He has taken his very famous 1920's seaside cottage, and made it his own charming getaway. It is the first home he has owned.
He installed translucent floor-length curtains because “they bring the house into the 21st century.” And then he hung up a 1930s map of the United States that had belonged to an aunt of his who for many years had a travel agency on Park Avenue. “I’d been carting that thing around forever,” he says. “The minute I put it up, all of a sudden the house was home.”
He says he "Billy Baldwinized" his living room...
...and you know I just love this color way, since I recently Billy Baldwenized my living room.
This beach house is small in scale, a product of its time, but nonetheless has many areas to take advantage of, such as this charming porch. I had a similar porch in my beach house, and made it a sleeping porch. Unlike this one, which is more structured with proper windows, mine was floor to ceiling screens on two walls. Still I managed to furnish it with everything you'd find in an indoor bedroom.
Here, this porch has wonderful comfortable furnishings, and you can imagine spending many hours here taking advantage of the view outside the windows.
This is a view from the dining room into the living room. I love the botanical prints hung over the doorway. The combined living/dining room, which, with its shed roof, was clearly a later but well-integrated addition to the cottage, is the space that the man of the house feels “saved the claustrophobic feeling of the rest of the house.” In this open, welcoming room he closed up an extra door, kept the gray wash on the walls and set a palette he characterizes as “Nantucket incarnate—oyster, clam shell, pearly white, sand, reed—natural colors all.” Crisp white, on mullions, door frames and in the hallway, served as a contrast to “make things pop.”
Now we're int the dining room, “A formal dining room would be too luxurious for a small Nantucket cottage.” The Confederate soldier’s uniform shirt—converted to a Native American tunic—and chairs are from Christie’s. Calvin Klein Home tabletop accessories and linens.
The master bedroom: The original configuration of the master bedroom was kept and a “floating” dressing table was placed at the recessed window. Artworks, from top, are a 20th-century French drawing, a 1941 Picasso lithograph and an Angelo Testa cutout. The antique mirror is from Christie’s.
“I tried to complement the pure Nantucket architecture of the guest room with simple materials and shapes,” says the home owner, who designed the bed and bench. On the early-20th-century chests are 19th-century glazed pottery vessels wired as lamps. I love the little garden bench and the woven wicker stool next to the nightstands - you can always use a little extra space for a book or a drink. Wouldn't you love to stay in this guest room? This is the front of the cottage. It's very famous, and has been photographed constantly. It's on Nantucket. It's called Rose Cottage. By now, you might have guessed who owns it, and who did it up in a style many of us appreciate...
...it's the home and handiwork of the very talented and charming Jeffrey Bilhuber!
Hope you enjoyed another Sunday By The Sea!