Living room, originally uploaded by Wren’s Nest Cottage.
I love the shade of green used for this room, it really sets off the painted furniture and gorgeous sofa. The real star has to be that wooden floor. The rich brown of the polished floor is such a treat!
This cottage has been so sympathetically styled, I just wondered what the wooden door at the side was all about. The owner explained:
They are shutters. We were on a trip to New Orleans a few years back (pre-katrina) and an old house in the Garden District was being remodelled. The owner was selling everything he had torn off the house and we saw these and fell in love with them. Luckily, we had driven instead of flying, so we loaded them up in the car and brought them home, with no idea what we’d do with them. They’ve roamed all over the house since then, til we finally decided they looked best here!
A friend who grew up in Washington State once told me that her family home had been a perfect example of this style until her father decided to ‘modernise’ in the late 80s. She’d returned home for a visit to discover he’d thrown everything, including original shutters 
on a bonfire. The house had become a featureless shell. Her parents loved it. Turned out they’d never liked ‘all that clutter’ and had just been waiting till they could afford to re-model. Needless to say her house in the UK is a repository of every kind of American folk art she’s been able to collect!
