Built in the 1950s as a weekend retreat, this single-storey house with wooden shingle cladding has now been reinvented as the permanent home of Analisse Taft-Gertsen and her husband, James Gertsen.
Repurposing a holiday home into a primary residence was not just a practical move, it was an intrinsic transformation: ‘When we decided to move in for good, the house didn’t feel like a permanent residence’, recalls Analisse Taft-Gertsen, the founder of ALT for Living and co-founder of The 1818 Collective. The challenge proved to be practically a reconstruction from scratch: the architect Analisse Taft-Gertsen and her husband James Gertsen removed windows, built a new master bathroom, and reconsidered every corner. The exterior walls remained, but everything else was redesigned. In nine months, what had previously been simply a summer retreta became a forever home.
However, there was another challenge: the scale. Accustomed to living in a larger house, the couple had to adapt to living with less. ‘I thought it would be difficult to live with half the space, but it's actually better’, admits the designer. Every corner was designed and every single wall was assigned a function. Despite all the changes, the original spirit of the house was preserved. Wood returned to the living room walls, the ceilings remained bare, and the stonework remained in the kitchen and bathrooms.