Traditional Home Magazine

July 1995

By Pamela J. Wilson
Photography by Rick Taylor

Over a hundred Junes have come and gone since the little brown house in Lake Bluff was built.  Originally it was a cottage in a Methodist church camp, a retreat for city folk who would flock to the sylvan woods for physical and spiritual renewal.

For the past 60 years, the cottage has served as a full-fledged house.  Its owners, George and Mary Ellen Holstein and their two sons, A.G. and Mike, have enjoyed its pleasures for 19 years.  George’s connection goes back even further: his own parents bought the house in 1947, and he lived here from the time he was seven until he went away to college.

When they bought the house from the elder Holsteins, George and Mary Ellen were living just a few block away.  George was thrilled to make the move, but Mary Ellen had a few misgivings.  “For him it was easy - he was just going home - but for me it was really a move.”  But move they did, and in the ensuing years, the Holsteins have made the charming cottage completely and beautifully their own.

The couple made their first imprint in the living room.  “We took courage and changed the wall color from safe beige to daffodil yellow,” Mary Ellen relates.  “We did it ouselves, and we felt quite daring. Back in the seventies, you didn’t see a lot of bright yellow living rooms, at least not around here.”

It took nine years before the Holsteins got up the gumption to do away with the wall-to-wall carpet.  “We had no idea what the floors were like,” Mary Ellen says. “When we pulled back the carpet, we were delighted to find beautiful edge-cut fir held together with square-head nails or no nails at all. We sanded them and they look like melted butter to me.”

Sunny walls, buttery floors, white painted ceiling beams, and an entire wall of French doors [designed by Ginny Anderson] are perfect enhancements for the room’s always-summer decorating scheme.  “Even when it’s snowing, we can sit in this room and feel like it’s the middle of June,” says Mary Ellen, who, with help from interior designer Margaret Wistrom, opted to slipcover the major seating pieces (all old) with the same cotton floral fabric.  “I love this fabric,” she says. “It’s a constand reminder of my garden.”

It is in the garden, weather permitting, that Mary Ellen spends much of her time. Dappled in tree-shaded sunshine, the tranquil garden is the result, she says, of “eighteen years’ worth of digging.”  Her labors have produced more than glorious blooms.  “I find all kinds of treasure when I’m out here digging and planting,” she says.  “Old medicine bottles, horseshoes from George’s dad playing, 1910 dog rags - there’s always a surprise awaiting to be unearthed.”

Throughout their marriage, the Holsteins have enjoyed surprising each other with gifts for the house.  One gift - a brass horn hanging above the living room fireplace - has extra special meaning. Mary Ellen relates: “When we were first married, we spied this horn in a shop window, but decided we couldn’t afford it. Several days later I went back and did something unheard-of in an antiques shop - I put the horn on layaway for a few dollars a week.  A month later, George went to the shop with plans of buying the horn as a gift for me, only to learn that it had already been sold, to me!  This was the beginning of our gift giving, and we’ve continued ever since.”

Along with gifts, the Holsteins have furnished their house with a delightful array of refurbished family heirlooms, antiques, and treasures from secondhand shops. “There’s so much love in all our things,” says Mary Ellen.  “I don’t think we own anything that doesn’t have a story behind it.”

In the living room, she points to the wildlife tiles that front the fireplace.  “George’s parents collected them in the late 1940’s, and the man who installed them still does work for us,” she says.  Many of the small tables in the living room are actually old trays and boxes set on handmade bases.  One of them is an old hatbox that George found in Iowa.  “It came with a surprise,” he says.  “Inside there was an old beaver top hat in fine condition.”

In the process of remodeling, the Holsteins “unearthed” a number of surprises, among them a 20-foot-deep, 6-foot-wide well (with water still in it) beneath the sitting room off the kitchen.  “I had always wondered why George referred to this room as the “well room,” and why it always seemed damp,” Mary Ellen says, “but I didn’t find out until we redid the kitchen and the workers had to tear out the old cork floor in order to lay new Mexican tiles.”  The quarry tiles - complete with footprints - were a Christmas gift from George.

The Holsteins’ latest, and by far the biggest, gift to each other is a marvelous lap-pool room located just steps away from their newly remodeled master bedroom and new bath/dressing room.  The pool room, featuring 10-foot-high walls of glass and cedar planking, and an 8×15-foot pool with an adjustable mechanical current, was designed by architect Ginny Kinnucan [Anderson].

“This room has changed our lives,” says Mary Ellen.  “The sound of the lapping is so soothing that we can hardly stay away.”  Besides exercising in the pool, the Holsteins enjoy having breakfast together at the small table for two.  Says George, “We even keep our coffeemaker in here. I t’s a wonderful way to start the day.”


Interior Design: Margret Widstrom
Architect: Ginny [Virginia Kinnucan] Anderson
Regional Editor: Jessie Walker Associates