KALEIDOSCOPE OF COLORS: Taking her cue from the colors in her Egyptian rug,
Rebecca fills the living room with a wine sofa, teal wicker chair and periwinkle cushions.
A creative homeowner paints life back into a charming, whimsical 800-square-foot cottage.
By Donna Pizzi

Rebecca Cutter’s realtor tried to talk her out of buying this formerly forlorn 1885 cottage in the Sellwood district of Portland, Oregon. “It looked like a double-wide trailer,” admits Rebecca. “Outside, it had fake gray-blue siding and aluminum slider windows. Inside, it was beige with fake paneling and heavy black leather furnishings.”
Four sections of 30-paned windows that were still intact convinced Rebecca that light, color and charm could bring the former cookhouse (which she dubbed “Little Tart” because of two neighboring brothels that once flanked it) back to its lively beginnings. As a writer, teacher and life coach, Rebecca knows the power of color to transform people’s lives. “If you pick the right color, it will reflect light instead of absorb it,” says the author of When Opposites Attract.
After living with white walls for 25 years in the belief that it was a better background for art, Rebecca realized (during the many hours she spent in private practice staring at white walls!) that color actually was more uplifting. The cottage’s lively history inspired her to choose a bright, periwinkle blue paint color (“Sorbonne” from Glidden’s Dulux® Inspirations™ line). “I wanted to bring back the liveliness of the cottage, and you just can’t be down when you look at periwinkle,” Rebecca says. “It just does something to the spirit.” To add whimsy, Rebecca cut star shapes out of paper plates and, using artist’s oils, stenciled stars on her walls, inside and out. “You simply can’t be depressed around stars,” she adds.
Choosing the right yellow for her bedroom was not as easy. After one try, she says, she woke up feeling as if she were inside a banana! “It was really cartoon yellow and so bad,” says Rebecca. Another time, the yellow was too pale. On the third try, she chose “Forsythia” by Miller Paint, and she hasn’t looked back. The experience taught her a valuable lesson in trial and error. “I don’t know much about the theory of colors,” says Rebecca, “but I do know that colors will fight each other, and you never really know until you put them together” what will work. Rebecca’s theory is that you really can’t go very wrong with paint, because you can always paint over any glaring mistakes. “Why,” she wonders, “is that concept so difficult for some people?”

3 SURPRISING DISPLAY IDEAS

1 FEATHERING THE NEST: Rebecca has been collecting fallen birds’ nests for decades as a metaphor for the storms we all must weather in our lives. A vintage 1920s drugstore case houses some of the nests in her collection. If you have a passion for something in nature, bring it inside and let its innate beauty simply shine through.
2 FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Rebecca adorns her mantel with a portrait of Einstein done in ink, which she spotted a homeless artist painting in San Diego’s Balboa Park and bought on the spot. She pairs it with a simple child’s toy, a weighty piece of Victorian gingerbread, and a bounty of flowers and wheat as a reminder that the simple things are what matter most in life.
3 MULTIPLYING LIGHT: Rebecca doesn’t believe in curtains that hide the light. Instead, she places 90-year-old leaded-glass windows, found at a garage sale for $10 apiece, in her living room window so they can refract the light, bouncing it all around the room. •