THE FIRST RENOVATION SERIES | The Windy Blue Bookcases

Sometimes, new additions to an old home feel as if they should have been there all along.

There are many original details we love about The Cottage… the old oak floors, the original doors and their worn brass hardware, the brick fireplace and terra cotta hearth. We love all the little pieces that have remained here since Hurcil built the house in 1945.

But one of our favorite things about The Cottage isn’t original at all.

Along one wall of the sitting room are two built-in bookcases painted a soft, dusty blue, separated by a window that looks out from the cottage. Filled with old books, collected treasures and little pieces of everyday life, the shelves have become one of the most recognizable features of the room.

They look as though they belong here.

It’s easy to assume they’ve always been part of the cottage. However, the windy blue bookcases were added much later by the second family to take stewardship of The Cottage.

The First Renovation

By the time the second family purchased The Cottage in 2009, it had already been home to the Vaughan family for generations. Over the years that followed, the new family began making changes of their own.

Some changes were practical, while others reflected the styles and ideas of the time. Some details they added, like the bookcases, would eventually become so much a part of the house that it became difficult to imagine the room without them.

Of course, much of their charm comes from the color.

The paint chosen isn’t a bright blue or overly sweet. It has a muted, timeworn quality that changes throughout the day depending on the light coming through the sitting room windows.

When that blue meets the creamy white walls, it makes the room feel special. The cream brings warmth to the blue, and the blue gives depth to the cream.

There is something distinctly English about the result.

Not because the bookcases are a copy of something found in an English country house, but because they bring together so many of the things we love about those interiors: color that feels comfortable, shelves styled intentionally, and old, collected things mixed with newer ones.

In a little Cape Cod cottage whose architectural story began with English building traditions, the bookcases somehow feel right at home.

When we first began learning the history of the house, we naturally wanted to know what was original. Finding something that has survived since 1945 is exciting because it gives us a tangible connection to the cottage Hurcil built.

But living here has taught us that original and worth keeping don’t always mean the same thing.

An old house isn’t shaped by one person in one year.

People care for the cottage, repair it, and leave pieces of themselves behind. Some changes last only until the next family comes along, while others seem to belong for much longer… almost as if The Cottage quietly asked for them to be intentionally placed.

The bookcases were someone else’s idea for this room, created during someone else’s chapter of the cottage’s life, but now they’re filled with our things.

We didn’t design them.

We didn’t build them.

We didn’t choose their beautiful dusty blue.

We simply walked into an old cottage one day and found the shelves waiting for us to bring them back to life and add our own special touches to them.

Perhaps the best compliment we can give the family before us is to continue to honor the bookcases the way we honor all the original details that have remained since 1945.

Until next week,