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Be My Guest

A preservationist restores a 1920s bungalow that results in an idyllic guest retreat.

Eight years ago, an architectural preservationist and her husband, an investment manager, both longtime Connecticut residents, bought the cottage next door to the putty-colored 1886 Victorian that they have owned since 1980. The previous owners of the cottage had moved away and their son had put it on the market, and the preservationist and her husband feared it would be torn down and replaced with a hulking structure out of scale with its setting.

“All preservationists learn from the beginning to respect each piece of architecture for what it is,” says the homeowner, who has been active in preservation and in the local historical society during the last thirty years. “When undertaking a project, we need to be diligent in maintaining the integrity of the architecture.”

Hunkered down in a shady glade and nestled above a rolling lawn ideal for an afternoon croquet match, the little vernacular-styled bungalow dates to 1925 and looks out on the white masts of moored sailboats in the harbor and the houses across the way.

At the time of the purchase, work was already underway on the restoration of the main house, originally built by a local oysterman, and the owners asked Sue Kipp, the Norwalk-based general contractor handling the job, for help on the cottage. “Most contractors hate restoration work,” Sue says, who herself lives in a 117-year-old Victorian and has become a sort of go-to resource for homeowners in the area averse to demolition. “They just want to bang it out fast. But this cottage has great bones.”

Sue employed about twenty subcontractors and sixteen different work crews over the course of six months, each with a distinct specialty, including insulation, framing, sheetrock, excavation, carpentry and masonry—in addition to roofers, plumbers, electricians and painters.

According to Sue, among the bungalow’s challenges were restoring the original copper hardware on the cabinetry in one of the bedrooms and repairing a large Hoosier cabinet in the kitchen, which required a considerable amount of mending and patching.

“Sure it would have been a lot easier to take out the Hoosier and throw it out the window, but it’s a wonderful experience to see what can be done if you don’t,” says Sue, who has been both restoring old homes and building new ones in the area for the last twenty-five years.

After eight layers of paint were stripped away, the owners’ vision was to adorn the 2,500-square-foot space in soft hues of blue and white, which evoke the structure’s natural surroundings. Original oak floors were repaired and left unstained, and a shallow grid, reminiscent of box beams, was installed on the ceiling in the main parlor. The grid, accented in white satin against a pale blue ceiling, gives the eight-foot-five ceiling an airy feel.

A dedicated scourer of antiques shops, Sue found a mantel at United House Wrecking in Stamford and immediately began stripping it; Sue recalls toiling over its carved crevices with a toothbrush. It now serves as the focal point in one of two sitting vignettes, centered between two wing chairs slip-covered in a pale blue. Riffing on the natural setting outside, the mantel displays a collection of petite birds’ nests beneath a pair of copper architectural artifacts.



Adjacent to this little salon, and just inside the doorway to the kitchen, is an improvised space for dining, featuring a rolling pedestal table with a marble top and ebonized legs. Sleek black leather chairs Sue found at Design Within Reach are tucked underneath.

In the main parlor, opposite the front door, a re-covered sofa from Hiden Galleries accented with zebra-print pillows sits beneath a rectangular gilt-framed mirror. On either side sits a chair covered in a brown-and-white toile.

The Victorian penchant for amassing specimens of nature is reflected in the well-chosen collection of hand-colored antique prints that decorate the walls throughout the cottage—and which earned the house its nickname: the Bug House. Stuffed birds, encased in a glass dome, sit atop a bookcase and tiny, mirrored sconces hang on many of the walls. Throughout the house, which today provides a quiet retreat for visiting friends and family, flashes of modern (a 1950s chair made of metal hoops, mod floor lamps) mingle with antique furniture and salvaged architectural details.

A dormitory-styled bedroom features three cast-iron beds lined up in a row, which the owner says gets a lot of use when her daughter visits with friends in tow, and in the master bedroom, a clean-lined pencil post bed with canopy framing (but no canopy) dominates the space. “I love the rectilinear shape,” Sue says.

Once the restoration was underway, the couple needed to find a way to connect the cottage to the main house. They sought out the expertise of Christopher Kusske of Kolkowitz and Kusske, a landscape architecture firm in Rowayton that had designed the landscaping for the main house several years ago.


“Our objective was to connect the cottage to the house and to allow easy movement in between, while enabling them to remain separate,” Kusske says.

He and his team built a serpentine masonry staircase that winds down from the cottage porch to the lawn, which lies twelve to fifteen feet below. To connect the brick patio outside the main house to the area beside the cottage, he built a meandering path of stairs made from existing rock outcroppings augmented by well-placed Connecticut stone. The steps lead to a woodland garden dappled with sunlight. It is a deliberately quiet place, lush with mountain laurel, holly, azaleas, ferns, viburnum, hydrangeas, lamb’s ears, dogwoods, chamaecyparis (conifers with foliage in flat sprays) and Oriental spruce.

“With those two gestures, the cottage and the house [suddenly] belonged to each other and became connected to the site,” Kusske says.

He then tackled the overgrown tangle of weeds and “volunteer” trees that had claimed the small yard in back of the cottage. He raised the grade about four feet, enclosed it with stone walls and created an island of flowers in the center.

When choosing the flowers, Kusske considered the fact that the family tends to be away during midsummer. Thus he planted species that would bloom in April, May and June, and then in September and October, choosing perennial irises, a dozen varieties of peonies, asters, Aconitum, roses and a low golden grass, among numerous others.

“It’s her secret garden,” says Christopher, who is often amazed at how many neighbors have found their way into the garden and subsequently sought him out to comment on it.

Looking back on her latest rescue, the bungalow’s owner says, “I guess I love its intimacy and its higher, more distant view of the river than the big house. And [the cost] was much, much less than tearing down and rebuilding.”

What’s next for this restoration buff? A prewar apartment in Manhattan.

Resources
Kolkowitz and Kusske, Rowayton, 838-5860
Design Within Reach, Greenwich, 422-2013, and Westport, 227-9707; dwr.com
Hiden Galleries, Stamford, 323-9090
Susan C. Kipp, Inc., Norwalk, 866-4541
United House Wrecking, Stamford, 348-5371; unitedhousewrecking.com