An Affair to Remember
After giving her cottage a face lift, designer Juliana Hibbert celebrates with a party and shares her secrets for hosting the perfect barbecue.
(Photo by Eric Roth)
At a party to celebrate her cottage's makeover, Juliana Hibbert (third from left) encourages her guests to sample the tangy red snapper, served on
banana leaves.
Juliana Hibbert was living in a two-bedroom apartment in Brockton when a friend told her about a ramshackle lake house for sale in Holbrook. Hibbert, an interior designer, wasn't looking to move, but her friend, who was house hunting, fired Hibbert's imagination: What if she could live on the water again? "When I first saw the house, it was moldy, grimy, and littered with trash, including newspapers going back to 1950," says Hibbert, who grew up on St. Lucia in the Caribbean.
A home inspector told her: "You'd have to be very ambitious to save it."
"Ambition is my middle name," Hibbert told him. She decided to buy the house in 2002. "I saw the potential," she says. "I would be bored if a house was in good shape."
Soon after, Hibbert began the task of making over the three-bedroom cottage. She hired a contractor to renovate the bathroom and open up the low ceilings in the living room, adding three skylights. He then built an enclosure around the back stairs to the basement, so Hibbert wouldn't have to step into snow to get to her laundry room. Hibbert power-washed the exteriors, and she and her brother repainted the house an army green. To spruce up the kitchen, she painted everything a creamy white.
Then it was time to decorate. "I wanted the house to feel like the home where I grew up," says Hibbert, 41. "Fun, casual, and simple." She was on a budget, so she scoured the region for classic, inexpensive furnishings. In the living room, the sofa came from Jordan's clearance center, while her favorite find for the space is a wooden "sculpture."
"It was an old tabletop laying on the floor of an antiques store," she says.
While renovating, Hibbert also managed to fall in love and start a family, marrying David Slocum, a manufacturing technician, in 2005, and giving birth to Nicolas, now 2. "It was the one thing missing in my life," she says.
To celebrate the cottage's makeover, Hibbert and her family recently threw a party in her pretty waterfront backyard. Most of us would have just tossed some chicken and burgers on the grill, but Hibbert's dinner party was an exercise in elegant yet down-to-earth entertaining. The menu was straight from the Caribbean - a friend's recipe for tender, tangy red snapper with lime and cilantro, and fried plantains and Caribbean-style sweet potatoes. Reggae and steel-drum music played on the stereo.
Hibbert decorated the patio with a palm tree and a coconut plant. She picked up on the bright reds in the patio umbrella and seat cushions with vibrant accessories like a striped table runner and her own creation: "planterns." She spray-painted five plastic 5-gallon buckets red, replaced the regular handles with chains, put bright yellow yellow candles on a baking dish on top, and strung them up around the patio. "They can be used as lanterns or planters," she says. Rather than spend a lot on fancy napkin holders, Hibbert made hers out of lemon peels, an inventive (on the cheap!) way to add color and texture to a standard barbecue.
Hibbert also discovered an inexpensive way to dress up an ugly concrete wall, since it was a part of her patio. She took a patio brick to
When a guest at the party mentions that she feels like she's on vacation, Hibbert cannot agree more. Says the satisfied designer: "My house has had a metamorphosis."
Eric Roth is a frequent contributor to the Globe Magazine. Send comments to designing@globe.com.
Hibbert's Tips for Beautiful Backyard Entertaining:
Pick a theme and plan the food and decor accordingly.
Keep colors consistent, like the reds and yellows at her party.
A runner is a cheap way to dress up a boring table.
Ask guests to help with food prep. "They'll have fun, and you'll spend more time with them," she says.
Transform an eyesore. She dressed up an unsightly concrete wall by painting it the same color as her brick patio and adorned an ugly metal pole with her homemade "planterns."
DESIGN: Creative Interiors by Juliana Hibbert, 508-494-6692
