This Ohio Cottage Is What Tiny Home Dreams Are Made of
A worn-down, Depression-era cottage reveals its soulful character thanks to the neighboring farm family who brought it back to life.
At barely 700 square feet, a humble clapboard cottage along the country lane to architect Greg Dutton’s family farm has always claimed an outsized place in his mother’s heart. “We’d drive by it, and my mom would say, ‘You know, that would be such a cute house to renovate one day; it has such good bones,’ ” Greg recalls.
You couldn’t ask for a more idyllic setting. Located in rural Ohio east of Columbus, the Dutton farm—once cratered by coal mining—is a sweeping 1,500 acres of bucolic pasture thanks to Greg’s parents, who reclaimed the land for farming in 1981. Several years ago, when the 1920 cottage on the outskirts of the farm hit the market, the family—including Greg’s wife, interior designer Liz Dutton—scooped it up to make it into their guesthouse.
Considering the cottage’s dilapidated condition, the logical choice would have been to take it down to the studs. But hearts prevailed, and the family embarked on a nine-month-long renovation, piecing together original, salvaged, and some new materials and peeling back layers of worn-down surfaces, uncovering hidden gems that guided their design choices, such as the pinkish hue of the heart-pine floorboards.
The home’s palette took shape with muted and moody paint colors and tonal textures. Natural light bounces from room to room, casting a dreamy glow against limewashed walls and creamy linen fabrics. “We wanted to embrace the imperfections, layer patinas, and deepen the lived-in-ness of the structure,” Liz says. Case in point: Saving the cottage’s single-pane windows became one of the Duttons’ more romantic gestures. Drawing a hot bath while the winter sun sets is sublime, Liz says, as frost frames the wavy glass filter on the snowy pastoral scene outside. “You feel like you’re at the edge of the earth because you’re in the middle of nowhere. It’s like something out of a storybook.”
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