INSPIRATION FOUND

Occasionally I’m caught off guard by a wave of inspiration. Not only can it come at weird times, it can also show up in the weirdest of places. Our Chesapeake Cottage at River’s Edge Cottages is like that for me.

My source of inspiration for that cabin was in a bathroom in a lovely SOHO loft in NYC!

Weird, right? This remote cabin in the wooded hills of southeastern Oklahoma being influenced by a bathroom in one the most glamorous urban neighborhoods in the US.

Tim and I had been kicking around the idea of building another cabin at River’s Edge . We both knew we wanted to break out of the mold and create something different from our other cottages.

What’s that got to do with the bathroom in a SOHO loft? Well, that requires a little backstory—

the backstory

We were living in New York City at the time. And I found myself in a women’s choir—the Soharmoniums— that rehearsed in the lovely, and architecturally stunning apartment owned by the founder of the choir.

Each week we would meet for rehearsal and share food, wine, and conversations together. And each week I would go to the bathroom and admire the beauty of the space. Like, that might sound weird—I promise that 99.9 percent of the time when I use the bathroom at someone else’s house it’s only because I need to—but this was a really interesting bathroom!

Why, you might ask, was this SOHO necessary-room so interesting? Well, it featured a combination of warm natural-redwood, shiplap siding and crisp white walls. The room was accented with a large, high window, a spacious walk-in shower. And double sinks, guarded by tall mirrors, reflected back the beauty of the space.

Something about it was so spa-like—and yet woodsy. Despite that, the concrete floors, tall ceilings, and clean lines made it feel very modern, and the natural redwood walls brought in a sense of the outdoors.

It was a bathroom, yes, probably the first one ever that has filled me with creative inspiration. But like I said at the beginning of this post, inspiration comes from all sorts of weird and interesting places!

As Tim and I got serious about the design of another cabin I knew that was the vibe we were going for— woodsy, like many of our other cabins at River’s Edge, but with a distinctly modern feel to it.

Years before, Tim and I had rented a beach-front cottage on Cape Cod and fallen in love with the architecture there. I loved the painted interior wood walls combined with natural hard-wood floors, the shake siding and steep-gabled roofs I saw along the Cape. We came away from that trip with a dream to build a cabin influenced by that distinct Cape Cod look.

It was an easy journey to blend the two ideas together once we came up with the vision for the interior.

Photo courtesy of Kacey Gilpin Photography

We situated the cabin on a ridge overlooking the scenic Mountain Fork River. We wanted the cabin to have splendid views of the water below: large windows looking down through secluded pines.

The cathedral ceiling gives the room a spacious feel and allows sunlight to pour in through the upper windows. I love it when I can add nature to an interior space—thus the need for large windows and a screened in porch!

• So that’s the story of the Chesapeake!

  Also, if you ever find yourself in NYC in May or December you should get yourself tickets to the Soharmonium’s biannual concert for a fun and exciting evening. They’re amazing!