Cottage Diaries | The Evolution of Our Home Library

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Hello, dear friends! Are you ready to say goodbye to 2025? Because I am! For many of us, 2025 has been a mixed bag of incredible highs, abysmal lows and, hopefully, some moments of peace and joy in between.

As I’ve been thinking of a topic for the last design story of the year, there’s a rare moment of quiet stillness around me. The house is clean, the streets are empty, and the oven is on. Snowflakes are dancing outside my window and the aroma of a freshly baked chocolate cake fills the air. A sweet pup resting at my feet and a good book at my fingertips – the promise of a joyful and calm ending to a tumultuous year. 

Looking back at another year gone by, I can’t help but feeling grateful for all the goodness in my life: work I’m passionate about, family and friends, new recipes to try, and, of course, new ways to update our home. And while we’ve completed several projects this year on the home front, the final piece of a complex puzzle is in place, and our family room / home library is complete. Although, one is never really done decorating, architecturally there’s nothing else I want to do in this room.

If you’re one of the few who haven’t tired of seeing our family room, I’m attaching a series of images of this space, some of which you’ve seen before, which tell the story of this room from the moment we first saw it, during the open house tour in March 2019, until earlier this year. 

As you can see from the two pictures above, the original space looked charming and cozy, but the room itself was small and architecturally disconcerting. There was a large closet where the washer / dryer combo was kept by the previous owners, and two small, off-center windows that offered very little in terms of natural light and views. While we kept the location of the closet, we replaced the large double doors with bi-folds, and moved the laundry station to the basement.

Over the course of six years, doorways were closed off and the flow was reconfigured, new windows and French doors were installed, centered on their respective elevations, bookshelves were built, painted and fussed about (the latter mainly by me). Through it all, the guiding principles in this room were coziness, symmetry and a connection to the outdoors.

Architecturally, the family room came together slowly, over time, as budget and local labor became available. We followed our original plans closely, and were finally done this summer. The only thing left for us to do was to create symmetry on the northern elevation. Symmetry is incredibly soothing to the human mind and mine is no exception.

There was already a bookcase on the left-hand side of the French doors, installed back in 2020, but at the time the off-center window was still in place, and the French doors (pictured above) were backordered and existed only on my sketches, so we left that bit of wall empty. 

Now, six years later, by adding a bookcase on the right-hand side of the French doors, that elevation feels much more balanced and the room complete and cozy, much like a warm blanket on a cold winter day. 

My home office is behind the bi-fold closet doors, where a desktop and shelves house my fabric samples, paint decks and project folders. Curtains, paint colors, rugs and accessories have been changing over time, as I’ve been experimenting with different color schemes and themes, but the architecture is finally in place, and I’m happy with how this room turned out. The hot pink chair (my favorite perch this season) is a recent purchase – $30 at a local church sale. Can you believe it?!

Wishing you all a joyous, healthy and blessed New Year!