Feature: Cottage by the Sea

Summers spent at the Waring family cottage are kick-back, read a book, feel the breeze hit your face kind of living. They’re comfortable, plain and simple. And if “comfortable” at first sounds a bit lacking in design muscle or standout sensibility—particularly given the home’s artistic bent, abundant antiques, and endless French doors leading to a lengthy wraparound porch—well then, so be it. Because as sure as the place has ridden out its share of storms since its construction in the late 1880s, anyone who has walked through its white-washed, beadboard walls knows that comfort is this home’s foundation—the soul of the place, perhaps—and that everything else can simply be looked upon as a bonus.

“There’s something that draws people to this place,” says Janice. “I believe that houses have spirits and ours has a good one.”

And while the house indeed has a good soul, it’s Janice’s creative spirit that makes it come alive. An artist by trade, the former president and current board member of the Gibbes Museum of Art invites artifacts from the past to mingle with items born of her ability to see art in the most unusual places. Case in point: the kitchen table, made from an abandoned piano she rescued from underneath a friend’s house one summer afternoon. “It had a fake veneer and was a hideous shade of brown, but its legs have such an organic shape that I had to have it.” After extensive sanding and repainting, she added a new top and voila! the once shabby eyesore is chic enough to serve a steady stream of guests. “It works well because we constantly entertain, especially in the summer,” Janice explains. “This place is so easy. I think that’s what draws people to it.”

Diamond in the Rough

The Warings bought the then-dilapidated dwelling in 1992, after a long search for the perfect place to escape. “We were looking at all of these big beach houses, but they were too modern or just didn’t have the right character,” says Janice of her and husband Tom’s search. “New, expensive houses are nice, but we wanted a home that feels relaxed, the kind of place where neighbors can wander over unannounced and stay for dinner.” So when a realtor took them to see the run-down cottage located next door to some good friends, he did so knowing that the Warings would be just imaginative enough to make it work.

Pointing to a series of “before” pictures framed in the den, Janice says, “The walls were stained dark, making the entire house feel closed off and dreary. The living room was more like a hallway. It was all so unsightly, seemingly unsalvageable even.” But it was a block from the beach, and despite the impossibly small kitchen, chopped-up layout, and cave-like interior, they had a good feeling. “We started dancing around the living room singing ‘This is it! This is it!’ The realtor looked at us like we were crazy, but we were right.”

Reclaimed Spirit

If intuition is to credit for the initial purchase of the house, it was divine inspiration that guided its two-year restoration.“I didn’t want to do anything unnatural to the structure,” says Janice. The first step was getting the house to meet post-Hugo flood guidelines, which meant raising the structure 10 feet. While they were at it, they raised the ceilings, added a second floor, and opened up the living room.

The most dramatic change came when they re-centered the house by expanding the kitchen and creating a large island.Then they added a back deck which leads to what is now the home’s official entrance: an antique screen door Janice chose because it reminded her of childhood summers in Greenwood, South Carolina. “It brings me back to all those evenings I spent catching lightning bugs,” she says.

Porches paired with screen doors surround most of the house and usher in plentiful breezes. And it’s this good-natured, airy ambiance that reminds Janice of a quote she kept from a newspaper headline: “It reads, ‘I wonder what it would be like in a world that was always June.’ Isn’t that perfect?”

In the Mix

Glancing around the color-filled cottage, it’s clear that there’s no single way to define Janice’s style. Mixed in with many of her own paintings are pieces that she has collected from various local estate sales and flea markets and pulled from her own family collections. “My husband’s family passed several beautiful things down to us from their old home in Georgia. I feel like it’s my duty to protect them,” says Janice.

Added to this collection are pieces from her own childhood. “My stepfather was in the textile industry, which afforded us the opportunity to travel quite a bit when I was younger,” she says, noting that she ended up with not only an international collection of furnishings, but also an appreciation for the philosophies of other cultures. “I learned to avoid a rigid, conformed way of living and found new ways of looking at design.”

“Most of the time, I go with my gut, which usually works pretty well,” admits Janice. “I find pieces that are significant to me in some way—it may be their color or form; I think that there are certain elements of design that live in your subconscious,” she explains.

And as teachers go, Janice just might be the perfect study. She began with a rundown cottage that “just felt right.” It was meant as simply a spot for a family to spend their summers, yet many years and one careful renovation later, it’s infused with lively paintings and beloved items picked up and dusted off along the way. The result is such a laid-back, comfortable spot that the couple and their children, Kate, Joe, and Richard, find themselves lounging about several months after Labor Day families have gone home. “We come out here to live in the summer, and often find ourselves staying through December,” says Janice.