The Bee Cottage Story
How I Made a Muddle of Things and Decorated My Way Back to Happiness
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Inspired by Frances Schultz’s popular House Beautiful magazine series on the makeover of her East Hampton house, Bee Cottage, what began as a decorating book evolved into a memoir combining the best elements of both: beautiful photos and a compelling personal story.
Schultz taps into what she learned during her renovations of Bee Cottage—determining how each area in the house and garden would be used and furnished—to unravel the question of how a mature, intelligent, successful woman could have made such a mess of her personal life. As she figures out each room over a period of years, Frances finds a new path in life, also a continual process. She comes to learn that, like decorating a home, our lives must adapt to who we are and what we need at different points along the way.
The Bee Cottage Story is part memoir, part home decorating guide. Frances discusses the kinds of useful, commonsense design issues that professionals take for granted and the rest of us just may not think of, prompting the reader to examine and discover her own “truth” in decorating—and in her life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Schultz, a blogger, author (A House in the South), and cable TV host, combines memoir with decorating in this illustrated tale of love and home. The author buys a cottage in the Hamptons, planning to live in it with her fianc . When the relationship ends before the wedding, she turns heartbreak into headboards (woven, from Pottery Barn) and drowns her sorrows in an 11 ft. 38 ft. lap pool with an installed fountain. In the process, she learns something about herself and her style: "I didn't even know what help I needed. Help moving forward from a painful decision with hurtful consequences for people I cared about? Help digging out of boxes and getting organized? Help from a handyman? The answer, of course, was all of the above." Schultz is the epitome of the successful woman who is unlucky in love until she puts her own house in order, which, in her case, means placing a bench from Katharine Hepburn's estate in her bedroom and painting the guest bedroom with Benjamin Moore Galapagos Turquoise. The book is lighthearted, self-indulgent, frivolous, and likable a good beach read, especially in the Hamptons.
