Osterville pool house makes a splash
Cape Cod Home / Summer 2017 / Home, Garden & Design, People & Businesses
Writer: Julie Craven Wagner / Photographer: Richard Hilgendorff
Osterville pool house makes a splash
Cape Cod Home / Summer 2017 / Home, Garden & Design, People & Businesses
Writer: Julie Craven Wagner / Photographer: Richard Hilgendorff
Family and friends gather for fun in the sun
“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” It’s conceivable that designer Marsha Malone, upon meeting her client Amy Collins several years ago, may have repeated this famous line from Casablanca. Malone, owner and principal of Nautique in Brewster, was first enlisted to help Collins, a savvy homeowner with a specific vision, with some items for her Florida home. This successful endeavor led to a recent collaboration transitioning a pool house to a guest house.
Collins and her husband, John, benefit from a lovingly and successfully “blended” family, as they share special times together, particularly at their home in Osterville during the summer. The young grandchildren love to visit “Papa’s House,” and when the extended family gathers together, every moment is precious and savored. For the young parents of these energetic children, the stress of imposing their busy, chaotic existence upon their hosts is completely avoided thanks to the serene and simply appointed guest house at Papa’s. “In the morning, the kids are told, ‘You cannot go into the main house until you see Papa up and about in the kitchen,’” Collins explains. But with a twinkle in her eye and a devilish laugh, she adds, “But usually, it is John telling me the same thing, I can’t go over to the guest house until I see that they are up!”
Collins oversaw the subs who accomplished the expansion that more than doubled her existing pool house. “Before, it was just kids in and out from the pool, wet towels, and grass on their feet. We thoroughly used the kitchen and bathroom, but there wasn’t really any civilized place to sit and be comfortable,” she says. “So, I thought, ‘Why don’t we add on to it?’ It occurred to me that it could be so much more, and with Marsha, we were able to outfit it with the pretty things I wanted, but everything is indestructible, so I never have to worry about it.”
Malone applied her signature “Nautique-look” to the new guest house and made sure every fabric could easily rebound from wet bathing suits, sticky hands and anything else thrown in the mix.