Before & After: Low Country Cottage Renovation

Josh Gibson clearly recalls how the 19th-century cottage looked when he first laid eyes on it: "It was definitely a mess," he says, laughing. It was 2013 and Gibson, an interiors photographer, had just purchased an “empty” plot in Beaufort, South Carolina, that included the dilapidated house.

At first, Gibson and his wife Michelle Prentice, a noted interior designer, thought they could flip it. But after crunching the numbers, they realized they'd hardly make any profit from a sale. So they decided to turn it into a short-term rental on Airbnb.

What followed was a year-long odyssey marked by torn-up linoleum floors and hours of research and brainpower spent trying to figure out how to adhere to strict historical regulations imposed by the city. In all, the couple spent $120,000 on restoring the cottage, but they don't regret one penny.

Here's how they did it, and how the cottage looks now.

Exterior

The structure was initially a two-room house, dating back to the 1890s or possibly further, with an addition built around 1914. Measuring 660-square-feet, it's not exactly fit for a family, which factored in the couple's decision to rent it through Airbnb.

But before they could think about renters, they had to address the structural issues rearing their ugly head in the living room. "The crown molding drops four inches from one side to another," notes Gibson, and a lot of the windows were awfully crooked.

To restabilize the house, some structural work was required, which meant hiring a contractor to literally crawl under the house, jack up the cottage, replace the brick piers it stood on and set it back down. Brick piers are common among low country houses, as the sandy soil doesn't lend itself to sturdy foundations, Gibson explains.

Living room

Next, the couple proceeded to pull off all the sheetrock throughout the house. "A lot of it had mildew," Gibson says, and "we wanted to put up the shiplap-looking walls" to retain the cottage's historical feel. "It would have just felt like a new house if we put more drywall up."

Instead of actual shiplap, Gibson used a more affordable material known as tongue-and-groove flooring. "The walls can take a lot of abuse without failing," says Gibson, and it's ideal material for short-term guests. "If someone bumps into it, it's not a big deal."

Per city regulations, the windows were replaced with the same exact versions framed in hand-painted wood with single panes. It was expensive, Prentice admits, but there was no way of getting around it.

Fortunately, Prentice got to run with the decor, which she wanted to feel fresh and youthful, not "doily old," as she jokingly puts it. "People aren’t looking for a super-slick hotel or a house to live in the way they might enjoy if they were going to Manhattan," she says of the cottage. "They’re looking for an experience that echoes the past."

To that end, she made sure most of the furniture is of a style that would have been around in the 1890s; for instance, the sage Asian bookshelf recalls Beaufort's storied past as a trading port, where pieces would have come from all over the world.

Kitchen

The kitchen, bathroom and queen bedroom were all part of the new addition built in the early 1900s. But the linoleum floors in the kitchen needed work. "We were convinced [the floors] wouldn't be good because there were vinyl floors on top of newspapers from the ’30s," Prentice says.

Fortunately, neither layer had been glued down, leaving the heart pine floors beneath in pristine condition. "They needed to be refinished, but we knew they were great when we saw them for the first time," Gibson says. "I said to Michelle, 'We couldn't afford these floors in our own house.'"

Prentice aimed to keep the decor "as clean as possible," she says, opting to do everything in stark white, including the oven, which was a challenge. She wanted the appliance to blend seamlessly with the cabinetry and had no interest in stainless steel. "I did the same thing with the tiny ¾-sized dishwasher," she says pointedly. "I wanted to put a cabinet door on that as well to just continue the line." Black granite counters and cooktops completed the sleek modern-meets-rustic look, while open shelves made the room feel more spacious.

To keep with the historical theme, Prentice paired a dining table from the 1930s with English folding chairs that would have been used on lawns or boats.

Bathroom

While the couple wasn't able to make the bathroom as large as they hoped, they managed to make it appear that way. "We just completely rearranged the bathroom from how it was set up," Gibson says. But first, he had to remove the water-damaged pine floors, which he replaced with marble tile from his own home.

Next up was replacing the "impractical" antique tub, as Prentice calls it, with a space-saving shower. "The shower head is from the Purist Kohler [collection] and it's actually very practical," she says. "You can pull it off the wall and rinse down the shower to keep it clean." She also figured when people are traveling they prefer to take a shower instead of a bath.

The light fixture echoes the past, Prentice says. "I don't like bathroom-like fixtures, so I sought something with an old-time feel that had a little twist to it."

Not pictured is a small pine shelf on the right hand wall, which provides extra storage for toiletries and complements the natural wood walls.

Queen bedroom

Without room for much furniture other than the bed, Prentice again made do with the space on hand. "I made a deliberate decision not to take the cabinets up to the ceiling, which would make the room feel too small," she says, and put pegs on the walls instead for long-hanging items.

A window seat between the cabinets provides a sunny place to read, while the four-poster bed, purchased from IKEA, "makes the whole thing feel completely dreamy," Prentice says. It also "fits with the idea of a canopy bed being appropriate [at the time the cottage was built]."

King bedroom

With people growing more accustomed to sleeping in king-size beds, Prentice knew this spacious room needed to have one. Here, she rearranged the cabinets to line up against a window.

Prentice was grateful to hire a contractor she'd worked with before. "He's collaborative and wanted to be hands-on," she says, and "he's very particular with how things proceed. He does everything the right way."

That gave the couple plenty of time to study how they wanted the house to come together, a decision that paid off in dividends.

Recently they received the 2015 award for restoration from the Historic Beaufort Foundation, and achieved “Superhost” status on Airbnb for their hospitality.

All images courtesy of Josh Gibson.

Related:

• Is Buying a Historic Home Right for You?
• Cottage Style Ideas for Your Home
• Before & After: Cottage Curb Appeal Makeover

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