Jenny Donelan Photography by Greg West

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Though it would be going too far to say “small is the new big,” some homeowners around New England have begun to consider downsizing to fit small spaces instead of upgrading to fill big ones. Air conditioning and heating bills, maintenance costs, environmental concerns and subtle shifts in public opinion against “McMansions” and the like are all contributing to this new sensibility, which cuts across economic brackets. “There’s a trend toward simpler, especially for weekend properties,” says Tim Harrington, a principal with real estate investment and development firm Atlantic Holdings in Kennebunk, Maine. “Smaller and simpler is better.”

Last year, Tim spearheaded the refurbishment of sixteen dilapidated vacation cottages along a picturesque inlet in a high-end neighborhood of Kennebunkport, Maine. Having acquired the property earlier, he decided to convert the tiny cottages, many of which measure no more than about two hundred square feet, into stylish efficiencies with character. The cottages are now rental properties (also for sale) and the whole compound operates, in Tim’s words, as a “high-end inn,” with services that include kayak rentals and bakery baskets delivered to your door.

To get those cottages from shabby to chic, Tim invited sixteen designers—one to a cottage—to redo the interiors, a project that would culminate in a public decorator showcase to benefit two local charities, The Child Abuse Prevention Council and River Tree Center for the Arts. The showcase was wildly popular, and the property has continued to generate attention. “We find there’s a huge interest in the concept of a cottage,” says Tim. While his company has heretofore built large homes—“and we still do that,” he adds—“what this project was about was: What do you really need to have a fun weekend in Kennebunkport?”

The answer, according to Ted, isn’t lots of space, but “a place to make your coffee and a porch to enjoy the view.”

In the case of Cabot Cove, it’s also a place that’s comfortably appointed inside and invitingly landscaped outside.

Creating that spirit was both a challenge and a joy to the designers, many of whom had never worked with such a small space before. “It was great because each one of these cottages turned out differently,” says Louise Hurlbutt of Hurlbutt Designs in Kennebunk, Maine, who designed Harbor Cottage. But all the designers, to varying degrees, faced the same dilemma: How to supply all the necessities without making the space crowded or claustrophobic? Here’s how three designers—each assigned one of the smallest cottages—dealt with that issue.

Designer Pauline Vastardis used reddish oranges, yellows and light greens—colors that reminded her of summers in Maine—to pull together the look for the cottage named Sandpiper. She used smaller scale furniture so as not to overwhelm the tiny interior.

A yacht on land
Designing her cottage, Sandpiper, was “really fun,” says Pauline Vastardis of Pauline Vastardis Interiors in Moorestown, New Jersey. (Pauline also spends summers in Cape Porpoise, Maine.) “It was very much like doing a yacht. Every inch counts instead of every foot.”

Her trick for handling the size challenge was to use custom-designed furniture scaled slightly smaller than the norm. “These were items that you could still use comfortably but made the space appear larger,” she says.

Pauline designed a two-bedroom cottage that sleeps three—one room has a twin bed, the other, a double. The drop-leaf table in the dining area is set for two but can be expanded to handle four people if need be. The bathroom, which she describes as “minuscule,” was the biggest hurdle. She used a sink on a stand to save room, and mounted storage on the wall.

Inside, Pauline opted for colors that reminded her of summers in Maine—oranges with a red cast and a light green. The obvious thing to do, she says, would have been to use subtle tones or marine shades. But even though the space was small, she explains, “I wanted it to have some drama, some punch.”

Joyce Jordan, who designed the cottage named Tranquility, went for clean lines and casual elegance that would appeal to a broad range of people. She deliberately chose dark furniture, such as the iron bed to provide contrast against the crisp blues and whites of the fabrics and walls.

Compact comfort
Joyce Jordan of Joyce Jordan Interiors in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire, was originally going to design Tranquility as a romantic getaway, then began thinking about the advisability of appealing to the broadest possible range of people. So she went instead for an “East Hampton” look—clean, simple and casually elegant. For colors, “I chose blue and white,” she says, “because both men and women are comfortable in it.” To support the overall look, she used dark furniture against off-white walls, and a dark iron bed against white beadboard walls.

The approximately 220-foot cottage was the smallest single living space Joyce had ever designed. “The idea is to make everything as compact as possible, but also comfortable,” she says. “The furniture you find today is so over-scaled—I did wicker so that I could put a loveseat and a good-sized chair in the living space.” There was room for two more chairs, but Joyce didn’t want “a line of chairs all at the same level” so she varied the seating by adding two higher-level bar stools at an extension of the kitchen’s butcher-block counter. “The idea was that if someone was preparing the meal, another person [or two] could sit at the counter and have a drink,” she says. Joyce also helped address the storage situation—a critical issue for all the cottages—by adding some storage space under the butcher-block extension.

A grown-up getaway
Antique store owner Beverly Bangs describes herself as flattered but intimidated when she was asked to decorate one of the cottages. As the owner of Antiques on Nine in Kennebunk, she knew a lot about furnishings, but not about designing interiors. “I had never done anything like this before,” she says. “In our store we’re constantly making little displays, but we’re not concerned with anyone having to live in them.”

For the cottage named Sea Mist, Beverly Bangs used plenty of antiques for an eclectic, fun and comfortable look.

Not only was Beverly’s cottage, Sea Mist, her first interior design project—it came with a twist. “It was so small,” says Beverly. “Trying to make it functional yet attractive was the biggest challenge.”

Beverly dealt with the task by thinking of the cottage “in terms of an adult fantasy, a treehouse or a sleeping porch.” Her goal was to create a livable space that would not be too crisp and new-looking, which she achieved by using antiques such as an old English shop counter for the kitchen and “outdoorsy” elements such as a twig chandelier over the bed for that treehouse feeling.

Each cottage had to include a bedroom, a living space, a kitchen and a bathroom. One of the first things Beverly did was to take down the wall between the bedroom and the living area. “Although you give up the privacy,” she says, “I thought if it were mine, this is how I would want it. You can sit up in bed with your coffee and look at the water, rather than at a wall.” She had a whitewashed headboard made in Pennsylvania by Amish craftsmen to work off the twig chandelier.

In the living room, she placed two chairs made by the same craftsmen to help tie the living and bedroom areas together.

For the kitchen, Beverly had a small advantage: “A tiny alcove that used to hold a hot water heater.” Into that space went a stove that looked like a commercial-style stainless range in miniature. Next to the stove she placed some antique industrial boxes for moveable storage. The refrigerator she located far enough away from the stove and sink so that “if someone was cooking or washing up, someone else could get drinks.”

In the bathroom, a shower with glass doors left just enough room for a toilet and a vessel sink atop a very small French bedside table. Because the bathroom door “bumped into things when you opened it,” she replaced it with a door on industrial-type sliders.

The end result of Beverly’s first foray into interior design was so pleasing to her that she admits to pangs of separation when the cottage quickly sold. “We all kind of laughed in the beginning of the project,” she says. “But now I could see getting away there. It’s charming.”


Jenny Donelan is a freelance writer who lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

Greg West's clients include architects, interior designers, contractors, builders and developers involved in commercial and residential properties. See his work at gregwestphotography.com.