Entertainment
Buying a Cottage and Finding a ‘Time Capsule’
A couple renovated a house in Darien, Conn., and retained much of what the previous owners had left behind.
Vickie and Neal Brauweiler live with their two teenage children in what Mr. Brauweiler, a 54-year-old software engineer, likes to call the “cheap seats” of affluent New Canaan, Conn. The couple were looking for an investment property that they could rent out and possibly take over themselves one day. They found it, for $625,000, in nearby Darien, Conn.
“It was very much a time capsule,” Ms. Brauweiler said about the 941-square-foot cottage, which dates from 1926 and has a gabled roof and half a garage. (The garage is shared with a neighbor; each half of the roof is painted the color of its corresponding residence, like the icing on a black-and-white cookie.)
When the couple went to professionals for renovation advice, they were told that ripping down walls and raising the roof could double the area. But the previous owners, a couple with three children, who had lived in the little house for more than 70 years, piped up, too, if only through the finishes and furnishings they left behind.
“You walk into a space and very clearly have a strong sense of how people were raised,” said Ms. Brauweiler, 53, who was trained as a graphic designer.