DESIGN: Steady Going

 

Elaine Mack refers to her vintage New Marlborough, Massachusetts, home as a “jigsaw puzzle house.” She and her husband, Stephen, bought the small cabin twelve years ago, and through the progressive process of slow renovation, have finally made it their own.

 

“If we had done everything immediately, we would have made a lot of mistakes,” Elaine muses. “By living in the house at first, we learned how we needed to live in it. By doing it piecemeal, we could make sure each room functions perfectly for us.”

 

Though they quickly fell in love with the setting, the dwelling left much to be desired. It was, as Elaine describes it, “a little brown shack with no redeeming features,” set above Umpachene Brook, a short stroll from the falls of the same name.

 

“It was an ugly, ugly house,” Elaine recalls. Everything was dark brown including the brown-black-and-white variegated shag carpet. Ugly radiator covers and an overabundance of shelves cluttered the space. Upstairs, the shower was rusted tin and the bathroom ceiling was so low—four feet eleven inches tall—that she had to bend down to clear the ceiling to get into the tub. On top of all that, the master bedroom had the darkest, most depressing wallpaper.

 

“The first night we spent here, Gans [the Great Barrington, Massachusetts, bedding store] delivered the mattress, and we said, What did we do?!”

 

Things didn’t look any better the next morning. A dumpster, new bathroom elements, and a few coats of interior paint helped, but the transformation of what was then a weekend retreat didn’t happen overnight. “In this house, everything evolves,” Steve says.

 

The Macks rejected the notion of a teardown or gut renovation, choosing instead to work with the existing structure and its assets—oak flooring, a quirky chalet-style banister, the original kitchen layout and cabinetry, and stone fireplaces.

 

Over time, with characteristic energy and acumen, the pair—he a retired jewelry industry executive and she the head personal shopper at Bergdorf Goodman—took advantage of their home’s footprint, extending the dining room outward and appropriating two adjacent outbuildings to create a master bedroom suite which, like the dining room, opens to a new deck covering the original cement-slab patio. The result is a sympathetic blend of old and new that retains the air of a country cottage and conforms to conservation commission parameters for building on a waterfront site.

 

The Macks, who met in college and married six days after graduation, had wanted a house on the water, but didn’t like the idea of a lake community. “We wanted to fish in our own stream and walk in our own woods,” Elaine explains. Staying at the Weathervane Inn in Egremont, Massachusetts, they spotted a photo in a real-estate magazine and went exploring to see if they could find the house. Finally, down a narrow dirt road, there it was.

 

“We walked down to it and there was the glorious, glorious river,” Elaine says. “There wasn’t a tree or a bush or a flower unless God had put it there.”

 

The first piece in the jigsaw puzzle was the upgrade of the kitchen. “It was a state-of-the-art kitchen … in the fifties,” Elaine remarks wryly. Appreciating the kitchen drawers, which were—and still are—deep enough for storing pots and pans, the Macks fitted the existing cabinetry with new doors.

 

Retaining the butcher-block top on the small kitchen island, they gutted the space below it to accommodate seating on one side, shelves for cookbooks and storage baskets on the opposite side, and an under-counter refrigerated wine cooler on the end near the dining room. Adding style to functionality, they recycled sections of an old radiator cover to form a screen between the stove and the mudroom entry and as an accent above one cabinet. A shelf above the sink displays white ironstone and other pottery; a stained-glass window defines the edge of the island near the dining room; and retro 1950s cooking brochures enliven one wall. The cabinetry is fitted with mismatched turn-of-the-century knobs and drawer pulls of clear glass, which the Macks acquired over the years at yard sales and antiques stores, creating a subtle vintage feel consistent with the glass doorknobs installed throughout the house.

 

Step two was the expansion and stylistic makeover of the dark, pine-paneled dining room. After removing the wall between it and the kitchen eating area, contractor Mark Fay worked with the conservation commission to extend the structure, replete with its vaulted ceiling, twelve feet outward toward the brook. A long, arched clerestory window—Stephen’s idea—was installed in the peak of the gable above the large rectangular windows and the window seat, overlooking the woods and the slope down to the water. A French door, opening to the deck, enhances the sense of spaciousness in the dining room and kitchen. When the couple’s three grown children and five grandchildren convene for holiday meals, the new space accommodates them with ease.

 

The third element of the renovation was the master suite, which opens from the hall between the kitchen and the dining area and contains a bathroom that doubles as the master bath and the first-floor powder room. The bedroom and its large walk-in closet were once a rudimentary guest cabin and storage shed that stood next to the house; Fay appropriated their footprints into the master suite. At the head of the bed, Steve had the idea of creating a half-wall to divide the space, serve as a headboard, and admit light to the closet area. Between this wall and the bathroom, a hall of built-in drawers and closets extends to the right—this is Steve’s terrain; Elaine has the room-sized walk-in closet all to herself.

 

The couple also designed a rectangular niche in the angled portion of the half-wall, to display a tall vase containing one of Elaine’s dried flower arrangements. Crossing the threshold from the main house into the master suite, she points out that the two-foot clearance between the solid wall and the end of the half-wall was once an outdoor path.

 

Upstairs, bathrooms were gutted and redone. A new dormer increased headroom in one; a toilet imported from France brings panache to the other. The two guest bedrooms—one yellow, one blue—were given an English-country ambiance with yard-sale furnishings and blue toile wallpaper. A third bedroom serves as Steve’s den and is decidedly more masculine with its exposed stone chimney, hunt-country color scheme, golf memorabilia, and a glass decanter of Scotch. Downstairs, in the once-dank basement, a colorful playroom brims with vintage toys and board games, the room’s original stone fireplace, comfortable chairs and sofas, and Steve’s favorite vintage recliner.

 

There were two final steps in the renovation plan: the transformation of a rough-around-the-edges vestibule into a proper entrance with a mudroom and the conversion of the side porch adjacent to the living room into a three-season porch. The porch and the deck overlook the shaded yard, which was landscaped over time to showcase the property’s tall trees. Shade gardens designed by horticulturist Julie Chamberlain containing ferns and other woodland plants and steps made by landscaper Jim Redman lead down the slope, surrounded by contemporary sculptures scattered here and there. Steve got the two-car garage he wanted, neat as a pin and styled as carefully as the house, courtesy of Elaine. A gazebo, by builder Bill Kennedy, is furnished with wicker and lit by a chandelier, offering additional space for alfresco dinners and entertaining.

 

 

Though the renovations and landscaping took time, decorating happened fast. “Almost everything we bought for the house came from the Berkshires,” Elaine says. But the majority of the couple’s furnishings were items they already had, thanks to a longtime accumulation of tag-sale triumphs and flea market and antique store finds; as well as objects from the past, from other houses and, most notably, their former condo in a Victorian house in Connecticut. The mix includes favorite heirlooms, such as a collection of old perfume bottles begun by Elaine’s mother.

 

“I have been decorating for years as an avocation,” Elaine notes. “We have had many lives in many houses, no two alike.” In her hands, interior decoration is like styling an outfit, combining new pieces with favorite worn-in accessories. In the living room, for instance, a Victorian washstand, clock, and vases date to the couple’s Connecticut condo, while the tag-sale chairs flanking the fireplace were reupholstered by M Designs in Sheffield, Massachusetts. In the yellow guest room, two hanging shelves bordering a window match perfectly even though Elaine originally had one and by chance her sister-in-law had its mate.

 

“I really tried to keep the house calm,” Elaine notes. “The river has a very calming effect on everybody. If the colors and decoration in the house were jarring, it would have negated the effect of the river.”

 

In warm months, this section of the Umpachene Brook is paradise enough—especially for the couple’s grandchildren, who enjoy its broad, flat rocks for sunbathing and picnics, a swimming hole, and spots to catch and release frogs. There’s a view of the river from every room in the house, but its dominance is subtle, like the sound of water coursing over the riverbed.

 

“The configuration of this house is amazing,” Elaine says. “There’s the sound of water, shafts of light across the river, blue herons that visit us.”

 

It’s the river that gave the house its name, which the Macks inherited and is one thing they wouldn’t change: River’s Rest. [SEPTEMBER 2010]

 

Gladys Montgomery is a contributing editor to Berkshire Living and editor of  Berkshire Living home+garden.

 

THE GOODS

M Designs Custom Sewing and Reupholstery
44 South Main St
Sheffield, Mass.

Mark Fay, builder
Sandisfield, Mass.


Bill Kennedy, builder
New Marlborough, Mass.


Jim Redman, landscaper
New Marlborough, Mass.


Julie Chamberlain, horticulturist
Ashley Falls, Mass.


Paul Rich & Sons
242 North St.
Pittsfield, Mass.