Woodshack turned Cottage Victorian

By JOYCE WADLER

Trevor

Sandra Foster turned a Catskills hunting cabin into the romantic Victorian cottage she had always wanted.

Sandra Foster turned a Catskills hunting cabin into the romantic Victorian cottage she had always wanted, using vintage columns, flooring and wavy glass windows, and doing the carpentry herself.

Before the renovation, the cabin was originally a 9-by-10-foot box, with a porch roof supported by white willow tree trunks.

The cottage fulfills a dream for Ms. Foster, whose middle-class family lost their home when she was a teenager on Long Island.

The shabby-chic retreat doesn't have a bathroom or a kitchen, but it is a dream of Victoriana: stacks of Limoges china with tiny rosebud patterns; chandeliers dripping crystal; billows of tissue-paper garlands. Many of the furnishings, like the $15 chandelier hanging over the sitting area, were flea market finds.

The china closet is a study of woodworking improvisation: Ms. Foster built the shelves, then added arched French doors that she found at a yard sale for $15 each. She has been collecting Limoges china for years.

The mirror was "a strange Band-Aid color — sort of pinky orange," Ms. Foster said, when she found it at a yard sale. She bought it for $22 and painted it with Ralph Lauren's Cove Point in flat white, the same color she used on the cottage walls. For the floors, she used Benjamin Moore's China White paint.

A stream runs between Ms. Foster's cottage and the trailer that she and her husband, Todd, live in. Furnishings must be lightweight enough to carry across.

The sleeping loft is accessible only by ladder — which has kept Ms. Foster's husband, Todd, who has back troubles, from joining her there.

The chandelier over the bed is from Target, as is the Simply Shabby Chic by Rachel Ashwell.

Ms. Foster extended the porch, replaced the tree trunks with vintage columns (which cost $60 each) and painted the house green and white.

For original article click this.