Jaqui enlisted the help of a friend, designer Charles Riley, to bring the cottage back to life.
They painted almost every surface white, except the floors of the main level, which wear
a pale seafoam. Jaqui meticulously searched for everything authentic including interior
French doors, frosted glass, wooden switchplates, and mother-of-pearl push-button light
switches. “We even deliberately nicked and scratched up the new floors we put down so they
would feel original,” she says. “It’s the little details that are so important.”
Once the actual structure took shape, Jaqui began unpacking all the treasures she and
John had been gathering over time. “We’d collected things for a future beach house for so
many years, hitting up antiques stores and flea markets from Maine down to Charleston,
South Carolina,” she says. “We finally got to take them out of storage and dust them all off.
Ten years after we closed on this house, all the pieces finally came together under one roof.
And I have to say, the outcome was a very happy ending.”
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