A 1907 Caretaker’s Cottage Is Transformed into an Elegant Family Home
By Jamie Marshall
Photos by Kate S. Jordan
Carol Neiley had been house hunting for seven years when she discovered the small caretaker’s cottage on the former William F. Buckley estate in Sharon. The long-abandoned house was in tough shape. But she wasn’t focused on the flaws. “I didn’t buy it for the house,” she says. “I bought it for the view. It has the most beautiful setting, almost like an Olmsted garden.”
That was in 2019, around the time she launched her Sharon-based boutique design firm, Maison Collab, with business partner Pamela Duncan Silver. “We’ve been best friends since we were 18,” says Neiley. “We finish each other’s sentences like an old married couple.” Having both owned and renovated houses in France, they knew they shared the same design aesthetic—which was ideally suited to their new project.
First, they addressed key structural issues. “We did a lot of reinforcement to make sure the house was really sound and a lot more square,” Neiley says.
They added a mudroom, and an office above it, removed a shed roof off the back, and created a dressing room on the second floor. They changed all the windows, sourced 18th- and 19th-century doors and hardware, and even reproduced actual Federal baseboard molding and trim for the entire house from a 1760s home in Red Hook.
When it was time for the interiors, they knew they wanted to keep the palette neutral, to evoke a sense of serenity and flow. They used Farrow & Ball Slipper Satin in every room, including trim and mullions. Even the plaster for the walls was tinted with the paint, which created a lovely wash of light.
As a result, each room flows seamlessly into the next. “Your eye doesn’t jump from color to color,” says Silver.
Adding to that tranquil effect is the deft use of lighting. “It’s one of our specialties,” says Neiley.
The designers take great joy in creating beautiful vignettes. “Every piece has a place and a purpose and a story,” says Neiley. “We’d rather have a bare plaster wall than the wrong chair against the wall.”
To achieve this highly curated feel, they spend weeks searching for the perfect table, commode, sofa, or lamp shade. They scour antiques stores in person and online. The twin ottomans in the living room are from a store in Lyon, France. The legs are made from faux kudu horn. A vintage lamp is topped with a marbleized shade from Bunny Williams’ shop in Falls Village. An antique dining table from Montage is covered with a vintage hemp linen sheet. “That was a trick I learned when I lived in Lyon,” says Neiley. Other than a small area rug beneath the dining table, they left the oak plank floors bare, upstairs and down. And, to play up the view, they left the windows unadorned. “We wanted to create the sense of bringing the outside in,” Silver says. And they did so—beautifully. —maisoncollab.com
