Nod to Nautical
This enchanting cottage, dug into Orono earth on the shores of Lake Minnetonka, was nothing more than a shack a few years ago, originally built to store life jackets and other lake-faring equipment. The husband loved coming down to the boathouse to take in the sights and sounds of the water, but his wife wasn’t keen on tromping down 30-some steps to hang out in a dingy boathouse. So the couple brought in Christine Albertsson of Albertsson Hansen Architecture to transform it into a cozy cottage where the couple could light a fire, watch the water, and generally spend time together. Having worked with the clients for years, Lisa Peck, principal of LiLu Interiors in Minneapolis, consulted on finishing materials and furnished the Nantucket-style space. “I took great care to be sure the furnishings supported the architecture,” says Peck.
1. Wood Works
After years of kitchens filled with predictable white cabinetry, these vertically grained Douglas fir cabinets look refreshingly modern and genuine. But you don’t get this look with off-the-shelf cabinetry. Patrick McMahon, owner of McMahon Fine Woodworking in Minneapolis created these rift-cut, Shaker-style cabinets. Primarily a furniture maker, McMahon approached the job from that perspective, aligning the slabs so the grain and tonal qualities of the wood line up beautifully. The hand-wrought hardware is slightly pitted and twisted for a casual note.
2. Bright White
Albertsson’s natural sympathy for the Swedish aesthetic appears in the white-painted, tongue-and-groove ceiling—the perfect backdrop for the original cross beams. The crisp design serves as a nod to nautical, and the bright white expands the space and counterbalances the heft of so much wood.
3. Garden Touches
The delicate apple green is Peck’s homage to the couple’s main house up the hill that is gray shake with green trim. Peck discovered this tufted-wool broadloom carpet at Aubrey Angelo and loved its sisal-like pom-poms that echo the tufts of grass outside the boathouse door. The green and white dinnerware—a mix of Fiestaware, Red Wing Pottery, and vintage pieces picked up from retro stores around town—carries on the casual ambiance and color story.
4. Shipshape
Peck chose this striped canvas from Kravet, with its touches of taupe, cream, gray, lime, and raspberry, to play off the limestone facing on the fireplace, the gray limestone countertops, and the vertical patterning in the cabinets and built-ins. “We could’ve done a simple blue stripe to keep with the nautical idea,” says Peck, “but we decided to have a little more fun with it.”
Alecia Stevens is a Minneapolis writer and interior designer.
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