A Cottage Named Betty Lou

A husband and wife DIY team charms the uglies from their postwar Spider Lake getaway.

TEXT BY ELIZABETH EDWARDS PHOTOGRAPHS BY TODD ZAWISTOWSKI

She was born just after World War II but didn’t come of age until last year. Call her Plain Jane until then. A boxy 550 square feet of drab—with the exception of a redeeming view of tree-ringed Spider Lake and its verdant Public Island. Homely, though, is in the past since Eric and Samantha Olsen took ownership of the bland little structure tucked into Traverse City’s cottage country. Most folks would have taken the property for its sandy beach and razed the structure. But as Samantha says: “We’re different that way.

Different, certainly, if you figure that most couples don’t have the skills of an HGTV crew between them. Consider their heritage: Eric’s father was a shop teacher, Samantha’s an engineer; his mother was an interior decorator, hers an interior designer. Together they own Blue Sky Building and Design— although Samantha is also a teacher. Among the couple’s favorite pastimes is combing flea markets, resale shops and home improvement stores for cool deals, then turning them into objet d’home.

When the Spider Lake cottage became theirs, the Olsens ripped into it with their signature gusto and skills: peeling fiber board and ancient insulation flew, the tiled drop-ceiling came down to reveal a peaked roof, the nasty brown indoor/outdoor carpet gave way to the original pine floor—a thorough sanding obliterated old glue marks and rendered the pine boards to their original honeyhue. The cottage needed shoring from underneath, so Eric and crew crawled under while Samantha stood in the living room and called out A little higher on the right …

Then the fun began. Samantha chose fresh but vintage-feeling pale blue walls and red window trim to transform what had been a blah tan exterior. Eric rocked the original roof by covering it with industrial-hip corrugated tin. A Craftsman-style door leftover from a Blue Sky job grounded the home in its bungalow-era nativity. And what to do with the shedlike add-on that housed the bathroom? Peak the flat roof, cover the sides in cedar shingles and turn a sorry afterthought into a sweet detail. Further embellishments: a cupola that the couple picked up at a yard sale, the Craftsman-esque portico that welcomes at the front door and windows trimmed out in little wooden awnings that Eric built in a spurt of creativity.

The interior dazzles with whitewashed pine walls bathed in natural light courtesy of expansive windows that look out on Spider Lake and a generous skylight that Eric picked up at Odom Re-use in Traverse City for $200. The kitchen includes a 1960’s perfect-condition apartment-sized stove, fresh from a Traverse senior center apartment

Opening page: The tiny great room feels expansive with its white walls and flood of natural light. Samantha found the table and chairs at a yard sale for $50 and painted them. The ladder leads to the loft. Below: The master bedroom is outfitted with family antiques—but the pennant collection was buried in the wall. a nother view of the great room—the closed door opens to the bathroom. Opposite: The Olsens replaced the old thick-slatted deck railing with goat fencing from Tractor Supply Company in Traverse City for a better view of the lake.

With spring on the way, let GTO get your landscape ready for the new season. We have a full-time staff devoted to plant care and maintenance. We are experts at environmentally safe methods to invigorate and keep your landscape thriving year round. Ask us and purchased at B&T Appliances in Traverse City. A 1950’s refrigerator that a friend refurbished chills from its place against the wall— equipped with a still-purring Frigidaire engine and T-Bird era graphics that all but say, Whip me up a casserole baby. The kitchen cabinets are Odom’s salvages, refaced with beadboard and trimmed in finger polish-red pulls from Ikea. Meet Betty Lou, Eric’s nickname for the cottage, in all her postwar flirty, homespun glam.

Diminutive as she is, Betty Lou sleeps 10. Count two (or more if you’re talking the Olsens’ teenaged daughters, Sierra and Cecily, and their friends) in the loft that Eric fit under the gables. Bunk beds Eric built into a tiny bedroom can fit two more (usually son Brenn and friend). Add Samantha and Eric in the master bedroom—the room where Samantha has framed and hung the complete set of midcentury baseball pennants she found buried in the wall. And, if need be, another duo can bed down on the plush red sleeper sofa in the living room.

Last summer was the first the Olsens spent with Betty Lou. Though the family lives on Old Mission Peninsula, only a half-hour drive from Spider Lake, they all but moved into the cottage for the summer. There they hung out on the (almost) as big-as-the-house deck, and boated Spider Lake in a new pontoon and an aluminum boat as old as Betty Lou. All in all, a deservedly sunny payoff for a DIY job well done. As Samantha sums up their labor of love: “Stripping it, cleaning it and making it fun."

Elizabeth Edwards is managing editor of Northern Home & Cottage. lissa@traversemagazine.com. FIND RESOURCES FOR THIS HOME ON PAGE 19.