Quirky Meets Rustic

When Annie and Ryan bought a cabin on a prime Balsam Lake lot, they weren’t planning to tear it down. Yet rot and mold meant they would need to start over. Our job was to create a new build with an old soul, something that felt as if it had always been there. Rule one: no sheetrock. In the main living spaces, we clad walls and ceilings in a mix of wood paneling and wallpaper. While the kid spaces did get painted walls, we compensated with pine ceilings, painted trim, and lively carpet. To furnish the space, we invented two imaginary family members to contribute “hand me downs,” a grandma with old-fashioned taste and an aunt whose pieces spanned the 50s to the 70s. A year of collecting from vintage shops across the midwest honed the aesthetic. Even the place settings are a mix of these two “relatives”!