Decorating & Design
August 31, 2018
Behind The Scenes: H&H Editor Morgan Michener’s Woodsy Cabin Makeover
Senior editor Morgan Michener shares an inside look at how she took her family cabin from rugged to rustic and refined, while respecting its rural roots.
This cabin was a labor of love. It used to belong to my mother-in-law, until she was ready to sell and the perfect buyers were right under her nose. My husband Chris and I wanted a place where we could escape Toronto on the weekends with our two kids, Jack and Phoebe. So we bought it in late summer and had a lot of work to do — fixing the roof, drilling a well, installing a wood stove. Once the important things were complete, we chipped away at interior projects over the winter. Read on for a behind-the-scenes look at the project from start to finish.
See Morgan’s stylish family cabin in our October 2018 issue, on newsstands from September 10.
One of the first things we did was replace the old leaking roof with a black metal one. We painted the exterior a dark black-green — Broadway (PPU18-20) by Behr, which worked perfectly with our woodsy surroundings.
Slide the arrow to see the before and after!
It wasn’t until we painted the floor white that everything came together. A lot of people told me to paint it grey but I just wanted white. It’s bright and a really nice contrast with all the wood.
Slide the arrow to see the before and after!
In the living room, I had the love seat reupholstered in a black ticking stripe. Our dog, Hayley, loves it as much as we do.
Everyone was saying, “You’re going to whitewash the walls, right?” And I really struggled with it. I think I would have missed the walls being wood if we painted them. It would have taken some of the soul out of the house, so we compromised and just painted the sunroom white. It worked out well.
Here is the sunroom coming together, with crazy-comfortable vintage furniture.
The kitchen is Home Depot. I went with a black kitchen because I thought it would be easy to maintain, and it’s proven to be really great already. I chose not to do a dishwasher because it would take up too much space. There really is something kind of lovely about putting your hands in hot soapy water. It brings you back and slows you down a bit, in a good way.
Here is the bathroom before we renovated it. Now there’s a sink with double faucets and a tiny painted hutch that holds towels.
Making progress! I didn’t keep the plywood floor in the bathroom. The black tiles tie in the black in the kitchen, which is close by.
My kids, Jack and Phoebe, share a bedroom. The bed frames are vintage, and the woman selling them to me wanted to make sure I wouldn’t paint them because they were her grandparents, so I promised I wouldn’t.
The cabin sits on 100 acres of land. We had a baby moose in the beaver pond, we’ve seen traces of bears and we see deer all the time. There’s a huge family of wild turkeys and barn owls. There are lots of animals which is really nice.
To see the final result of Morgan’s cottage makeover, pick up our October 2018 issue, on newsstands from September 10.
After photos by Virginia Macdonald