It’s handy to have a small cottage when family or friends come to stay.
And if you have one designed by craftsman Bruce Ketterer and decorated by his wife, Kathleen McPhail, you may want to move in yourself.
This creative team — two of this city’s most sought-after, hands-on “imagineers” — recently put the finishing touches on a small barn originally intended for goats.
No goats ever lived there, and when the owners decided to shelve that plan and turn the space into a guest cottage and studio, they gave Ketterer and McPhail carte blanche to explore their creativity.
The result is a small work of art in a forest.
Ketterer, who founded Carson Finishing in 1986, built all the doors, kitchen cabinets and island, interior window-wall partitions, bench seats, night stands and headboard in the bedroom, as well as a sleek white credenza in the dining area, a French-style concrete fireplace and bathroom vanity.
In turn, McPhail (of Murals by McPhail) did all the decorative painting, including faux painting the kitchen floor in a checkerboard pattern, creating embellishments on everything from headboard to closet doors and hand-painting vellum window screens in the bathroom.
She also painted all the art that hangs on the walls.
“The owners wanted a comfortable old-world feel for their guests, and a look that complemented their European-style main house,” said McPhail, who noted she and her husband drew upon their love of everything Italian and French to complete the project.
The owners asked for big windows and French doors so guests could interact directly with nature, so McPhail also took on the job of designing the gardens with deer-resistant foliage.
Guests now enjoy being lulled to sleep by owls, or having coffee in the morning while watching deer wander freely through the two-hectare property.
Soon they will also be able to use cedar platforms that are being built in various sun-baked forest spots that follow the sun’s passage, where they can practise yoga at different times of the day, in a variety of environments.
Ketterer said the challenge was to keep it all flowing.
“That’s where Kath came in. I’ve got so many ideas in my head that I tend to stray a little. She’s got a really good eye and keeps me on track,” he said with a chuckle.
Every room has unique elements, including the kitchen, which is large for a little cottage — measuring four by nine metres — as the owners plan to entertain there from time to time, and perhaps host cooking classes.
Once Ketterer completed all the cabinets and island, McPhail gave it an old-world look. After layering custom-mixed shades of Benjamin Moore’s French blues on the cabinets, she sanded them in just the right places. “You have to imagine you were working in the kitchen 200 years ago and where you would have had areas of wear.”
She painted the warm white distressed-oak island with reproductions of vintage French wine labels. On its cupboard doors, facing the living room, are acanthus leaves taken from French decorative motifs, “so the whole thing would look like an old wine crate.”
The fir floor was originally going to be stained the same as the living room, but as the space was large and ceilings almost four metres high, she decided to create something more interesting — a large checkerboard pattern.
She began by painting the floor in large squares using French blue and off-white, then power-sanded the surface to remove paint “in artistically calculated places.”
“Once again, I was thinking where the wear and tear would have been in an old floor, without making it look too contrived. It was really fun to do.”
Now the kitchen looked more important, so they decided to open it up to the rest of the living area by adding mullioned windows that Ketterer had salvaged. He built them into walls between kitchen and dining area, and between kitchen and sitting room, giving the rooms a distinguished look while adding more light.
“You see this in many of the old European apartments and offices, where people can glimpse from room to room without having to actually walk in,” he said.
The bathroom is another surprise.
As much as they would have liked to install a clawfoot tub and old-world elements, they chose a contemporary vibe here. “It’s nice to relax in a modern spa, with heated floors and Peruvian travertine on the floor and up the walls,” Ketterer said.
“In Europe they are all about fashion and design, and they are always working around these 300- and 400-year-old buildings.
“I think it’s nice that they don’t get stuck in the past. That’s the cool combination: the forward movement of design, without forgetting the past.”
In the living room, he built a concrete fireplace after admiring a similar 16th-century one in France. “I’m not a cement genius, but I was able to copy this one from an old villa. You see a lot of these in antique sites in France and Italy.”
The couple spent part of last fall in Italy, poring over architecture and attending a decorative arts school in Florence. He took a gold-leafing course focusing on a centuries-old technique called water gilding, “with Maestro Emiliano, who blew my mind.”
“The technique is still done the same way today on very old antiques, or when restoring private palaces and churches. You start with a mixture of gesso, rabbit skin and fish glue. My instructor was a third-generation restorer who was very specific and detailed.
“It was really, really interesting and incredibly in-depth. We worked together, one-on-one, and I was totally exhausted at the end of each day.”
Meanwhile, McPhail did a course in decorative painting to make surfaces look three-dimensional. She also studied Italian ornamentation and grotesques, carved stone mythical figures.
Although she is an accomplished professional artist, “the course made me feel like a hack,” she said with a smile.
“My teacher has been doing this kind of work for a living in old palaces for years, and was unbelievably talented and picky. I spent half the course learning to draw a straight line properly.”
The two were fascinated to learn how European designers juxtapose old and new, blending historic and contemporary spaces. “Their blank canvas is usually a 16th- or 17th-century building and they like to inject a modern look,” McPhail said.
Ketterer added that people in France and Italy make their homes to live in, with warmth and character, “unlike here, where so much is cookie cutter, repetitive, decorated in the hopes of resale.”