Eclectic vintage finds, bold colour choices and carefully edited collections have brought new life to this 19th-century worker’s cottage in the Dutch countryside
FEATURE TON BOUWER PHOTOGRAPHS MONIQUE VAN DER PAUW
The ceiling lights were found at a flea market and the table is a 1970s design for Dutch label, Pastoe.
Marilu’s husband, Gesines, had been aware of their future home long before they bought it, having once lived on the same street. ‘He always thought it was a lovely house, with its stained-glass windows,’ she explains. ‘So some years later, he approached the old woman who lived here, and asked her to let him know if she ever wanted to sell, and that’s how it came to be ours.’ Although picturesque on the outside, the interior was another story. ‘There was one main room and a bedroom, as well as a kitchen that was falling apart, and wind blew through the entire house.’ Added to which, there was asbestos and the woodwork was rotting. ‘It was in a terrible state,’ Marilu recalls, and yet she was totally won over by its untouched state. ‘It was super-charming. I like houses with a history, and here, everything was just as it had always been.’
The renovation took many years, with the couple working steadily room by room, making sure that there was always a space that felt liveable. ‘That was my one condition, before taking it on,’ Marilu recalls. ‘There always had to be one clean room!’ The couple were keen to preserve the authentic style of the house, but first it had to be made habitable, which involved stripping everything out and installing a better kitchen and insulation. Where he could, Gesines reused old materials, but when this wasn’t possible, he replicated the original designs. The box-bed in their study is a good example. ‘It’s a copy of what had been there; it’s entirely new, but feels beautifully old,’ says Marilu.
While Gesines took the lead with the DIY side of the renovation, Marilu supplied the creative vision. ‘My taste is eclectic, and it can be hard when you like a lot of different styles,’ she says. ‘I’m full of ideas and I find it difficult to choose – I always want to change things!’ In the end, in order to accommodate all her ideas, she settled on specific themes for each room, allowing her the creative freedom to experiment as much as she liked, without having to commit to just one look. In the bedroom M
