Soul Support
Rosanne Bush brings the reused and the retooled to an old house by the sea and finds rebirth.
While the inside of Rosanne Bush's waterside home may speak volumes about who she is, it's the outside that whispers softly about her soul.
Her Second Empire home in Hull has stood on the shores of Hingham Bay since 1856, its wide porch opening its arms to the beautiful vista. And it surely embraced Bush, who says she cried the first time she laid eyes on it, so taken was she by the house and its setting.
A breast cancer survivor, she describes herself as a spiritual person, and this house called out to that spirit. "I felt a rebirth when I walked in here," she says simply.
"You're sensitive to your surroundings -- the wind, the light," Bush, 56, says. "Once you've lived on the water, you don't want to live anywhere else."
The owner of Designer Consigner in Hingham, a consignment shop for jewelry, accessories, and women's clothing, Bush has perfected the art of reusing and retooling. Her home bespeaks her love of the old and the unusual, with junk-shop jewels, import-store finds, nature's bounty, and family heirlooms mixing happily in her space.
After considering colors for the exterior of her home, Bush chose a mauve field with gray trim, accented by an eggplant door, because, she says, the colors are fetching in the seaside light. "Look at this," Bush says, waving her arm across the vista. "I sit out here and have tea and watch the most fabulous sunset every night. My dogs even love it."
Inside, Bush has seemingly captured time in a bottle, with mottled plaster walls, mismatched floorboards, and furniture that ranges from old wood to wicker to comfy upholstered pieces, all vying for attention in the open, airy space. Her grandmother's elegant folding screen, resembling an old European oil with its deep browns and warm golds, is a perfect foil for the room's shabby-chic ambience. Colorful fabrics and pillows invite the eye to wander, as do the imaginative displays of art, pottery, and found objects. A Victorian fireplace mantel, purchased at an antique shop in Cohasset, is secured to the wall with the help of a heavy rope.
When Bush first toured the house, she confronted exposed framing and insulation, not to mention the lack of a working kitchen. The previous owner, an interior decorator and friend, "couldn't make up her mind" about the look she wanted, Bush says. Although many of the weightier tasks -- such as repairing or replacing the foundation, plumbing, and heating and electrical systems -- had been completed, little finish work had been done.
Bush bought the house three years ago and spent two years fixing it up before living there full time. Her first order of business was to plaster the walls. Next, she turned to the kitchen, part of the expansive room that encompasses her living and eating areas. A plumber friend propped an old sink on sawhorses and hooked up the pipes, then Bush made a skirt for the sink. An older stove and refrigerator were already there. Her dinnerware and foodstuffs are housed in a bookcase that she bought from a secondhand shop in Hull.
Other work followed: "I painted, reglazed the windows, and installed a washer and dryer." Upstairs, the bedroom walls are coated with calcimine, a calcium carbonate product. Bush says she's been told the chalklike surface can't be patched easily, but no matter -- she's fond of the weathered look it imparts.
The bathroom is outfitted with a claw-foot tub, and closets with peeling paint hold her linens and the gear for her two bouncing corgis. The original floor is a gem, its worn and torn linoleum a facsimile of the small hexagonal-tile floors so popular a century ago. "Don't you just love it?" Bush exclaims.
From her days living on a horse farm in Duxbury, where many of her neighbors kept sheep, Bush learned to card and spin wool. Later, when she moved to East Bridgewater, she kept her own sheep. She pulls out beautiful sweaters that display her knitting skills. As if that weren't enough, Bush also learned to make Nantucket baskets, and samples grace the mantel, tables, and shelves of her home. Not bad for "a Jewish girl from Washington, D.C.," she says, laughing.
Reflecting on the "karma" of her seaside home, Bush says: "You get used to this. I could see myself living like this for a long time."
rising
falling 