Ma petite maison d'hôtes

My little guest house/transitions

Trinidad and I bought our home almost 9 years ago.  It's a tiny little cottage but we liked the fact that it had room for a large garden and also to house our merchandise as well as a workshop/studio.  It is out in the country in Corralitos, surrounded by orchards and strawberry fields, so we came up with the name Atelier de Campagne: Country Workshop.

In our previous home, I fashioned a "workshop" out of our car port.  Our neighbors would walk by and stop to talk to me as I worked either on refinishing a piece I had found in a flea market or antique fair or creating a new piece of furniture out of reclaimed wood.  "Every time I see you work, it makes me want to go home and work on a project" some of them would say. It made me feel good to know I could inspire people to create.

As we moved into our new place, I was ecstatic about having more room where I could build a workshop/studio and have room to store my tools and materials. Soon after we moved in however, I had to return to my native Belgium and was not able to build my workshop.  This sudden change and transition as much I resented at first, propelled us to reinvent our business and it transitioned into an import business.

As we began to import European antiques and brocante, we began to focus more on French Country and expanded into a sort of Temps Perdu and Style Industriel.  I foud new inspirations and my designs also transitioned.  I now had more, and varied materials that I could work with. Trinidad and I also talked about the necessity to build a storage shed where we could protect the merchandise we would be importing from Europe so he hired someone to build it.  It served it's purpose as a storage of merchandise and now it is also time for this little structure to transition.  It is becoming a petite Maison d'Hôtes.

During my short visits, aside from preparing for our bi-annual container sales, I have been focused on creating "a room of my own."  It is not quite ready to be lived in, so in the mean time, I have been using it as a sort of canvas where I can rehearse designing different vignettes.  I thought I might share some of these with you.  Hope you get to come to one of our events and see it.
Johan