Architect Geoffrey Mouen designs a simply sweet getaway cottage in Rosemary Beach, Florida.

Plain-spoken and sturdy, the ca. 1900 house wants to be Arts & Crafts inside. With period colors and Morris-designed wallpapers, a delighted owner has played up the natural chestnut woodwork.

Saved from its derelict condition, the plucky cottage became a vacation home for a family who enjoy the rugged joys of coastal Maine.

A small cottage kitchen in Maine gets a timeless makeover.

Many stories are told by this much-evolved house, which features original Georgian period woodwork as well as later additions.

With new owners, a lakeside summer cottage becomes a year-round sanctuary.

Architect Stuart Disston of Austin Patterson Disston Architects designs a breezy, beautiful guest home in Westhampton, Long Island.

This Victorian-era house with a bold exterior boasts paneled walls, art glass, and custom colors inside as well.

Once a beach shack in Westport, this home was transformed by its owners—with river stones and a good eye for restraint—into a vernacular beauty.

Easy and casual, this 1890 Victorian cottage is all-American with a nautical theme.

A renovated French Creole cottage offers the best of old and new on Florida’s Apalachicola River.

An addition to a Gothic Revival Cottage keeps the original house as the prominent view with a clear delineation between the original building and the new one.

Based on California’s coastal beach cottages from the 1930s, architect Stephen Giannetti designs his home in Santa Monica—and his wife, Brooke, an interior designer, adds the finishing touches.