Happy Trail

This 1,000-square-foot cabin in upstate New York gets a whimsical and colorful makeover as a summer getaway.

What colors make you happy? For homeowner and business owner Wendy Conklin, it’s bright, cheery colors that make her tick. Her home in Texas (which you can see in our August 2024 issue) is full of whimsy and cheer, and it was her love of color, pattern and creativity that led to her start a successful chair upholstery business, Chair Whimsy.

So when the opportunity came for her and her husband to purchase a summer cottage in upstate New York, she knew it needed a twist on her signature look. “It’s circus chic, but with a little bit of lake house mixed in,” she says.

Meant to Be

Texas summers are brutally hot. “We have neighbors in Texas that have a cabin in New York,” Wendy says. “They were escaping the summer, and we stayed with them for a few days.” Wendy and her husband were fresh empty nesters, and the summer that year was intense. “We were getting 108-degree days, it was really off the charts, and we were miserable. And we thought, ‘What if we put this money we’ve been spending on our kids into a place we’ll invest in and go for the summer? Wouldn’t it be great to have someplace to escape to and use as an investment?’”

The summer of 2024 was Wendy and her husband Blane’s first stay at the cabin. “We went up at the end of April with a van of things we wanted to drop off,” Wendy says. “Then we drove back at the beginning of June, and we were there through August.” Built in 1965, it went up for sale in 2020 and a neighbor bought and flipped it with upgrades. “I was worried that I wouldn’t like being away, but I loved it, and then I was looking forward to coming home at the end of the summer,” Wendy says.

After searching around online, they found this little 1,000-square-foot “camp” on the shores of Lake Nancy, 30 minutes from Saratoga Springs. “They call these camps, which is a summer home that’s not winterized and is just meant for the summer months,” Wendy says. This camp was built in 1965, and one of the neighbors had bought and flipped it in 2020. “It’s almost like we have a new house,” she says.

Blank Slate

But while the house didn’t need any structural renovations, it was a completely blank slate, which can be intimidating. “It was hard to figure out,” Wendy says. “I was on a deadline to finish before we returned to Texas, and it was a bit daunting at first, ” Wendy says. “I basically had a couple of months to figure it out. I’d start on Pinterest and then switch over to Canva and create a mood board.”

“It’s circus chic, but with a little bit of lake house mixed in.”

The design all started with the red and white striped sofa in the living room. “Every time I saw one in a magazine or on a TV show it took my breath away, so I decided that would be my starting point,” she says. Wendy’s Texas house has a lot of vibrant prints and colors, but focuses on a softer, pinker palette. “I opened myself up to different color schemes in the rooms,” Wendy says. “This has more primary colors, pink and red mixed with blue, and then yellow thrown in, green and orange. My Texas house has a lot of pink but not much red, so it does give you that circus chic style.”

Feature Focus

With a hard deadline to finish the interiors for the photoshoot with Cottages & Bungalows, Wendy went on the hunt and found a mix of vintage and new pieces, as well as those she painted and embellished herself. “I found a lot of stuff up at the local antiques shops, barn sales and on Facebook Marketplace,” she says. She and her husband also drove a trailer up from Texas with hand painted chairs, mattresses, and other pieces.

“I opened myself up to different color schemes in the rooms.”

Wendy added lots of color and pattern through the furniture and decor, but left the natural stain of the wood wainscoting. “I wanted to honor that it was like a cabin,” she says. The red-and-white striped sofa was Wendy’s inspiration for the circus chic feel of the cabin. “That was a splurge,” she says. The armchairs are vintage pieces she reupholstered herself, and the coffee table is an old lobster trap, to which she added legs and filled with old bouys and fairy lights. In the corner of the room next to the front door is Blane’s desk space, where he worked for the summer. “I found antique fishing lures and mounted them to the wall,” Wendy says. “Another storage solution was for his fishing rod, to lean it up against the wall.”

And the results are stunning. “I was worried about whether I would be ok not being home in Texas all summer,” Wendy says. “But it was great. And the thing I loved most was that I had the liberty to make over the place from scratch. It was a summer-long problem-solving project.” This year is their second summer at the cabin, and there are more projects, of course. “We’re working outside this summer, landscaping, revamping the shed, and there’s an old outhouse that at least has no hole in the ground,” she laughs. And of course, enjoying each other and the nature around them. “I spend so much time on the front porch,” Wendy says. “I go out there and paint. I listen to the birds at night.” And that’s what a summer escape is all about.

The 1,000-square-foot cabin has an open space for the kitchen, living room and dining room. Wendy found an old workbench to use as a kitchen island. “It still has a vice attached to it,” she says. The kitchen is her favorite space in the house “because I wallpapered the fridge,” she says. In the dining area, she reupholstered the chairs, repainted the table and even repainted the vintage chandelier she found and made a chord cover to match.

Most of the furniture in the house is from local antiques stores, barn sales and Facebook Marketplace. Wendy repainted a lot of the furniture using Dixie Belle Paint, but left the chippy dresser she found for her office.

The art on the walls comes from a variety of sources. There are vintage signs Wendy found while antiquing, as well as original art she painted herself, like the tea cup painting to the right of the hanging mug collection. She also has many online friends in the decor world, and got some of her art from them, including the colorful leopard to the left of the dish rack.

The cabin has three bedrooms, which are all very small in size. Wendy and her husband Blane couldn’t fit any furniture other than their bed into the primary bedroom, so they got creative and put their clothes in the other bedrooms. Wendy uses this second bedroom as her closet space, office and creative studio. The colorful hanging on the wall is a Mexican textile, part of the large textile collection she keeps at her Texas home for her business, Chair Whimsy.

The primary bedroom looks cozy with matching nightstands and charming strawberry lamps. “It’s weird how many tiny tables you can find up here antiquing, and they’re all really cheap, $15 or $30,” Wendy says. “There was a real need for slim, small side tables.”

The single bathroom in the house is very small, and includes a corner shower and tiny vanity. “The bathroom is so tiny, you can’t even wash your face in it,” Wendy says. “I wash my face and brush my teeth in the kitchen sink. And the shower is a half-moon with a sliding door. If you drop the soap, good luck.”

The third bedroom in the house is the “long bedroom” because it’s long and skinny. “It’s a very odd space and I had to figure out how to make it functional and look normal and not like a mistake,” Wendy says. She added a long dresser to hold Blane’s clothes, and reapainted it to match the custom set of house drawings she got from an artist friend on Instagram.

How to Wallpaper Your Fridge

Wendy added a cute pink-and-red checked wallpaper to her refrigerator, which adds so much color and pattern to the kitchen. Here’s how you can do the same.

What You’ll Need:

Pre-pasted wallpaper of choice
Plastic flat edge tool
X-Acto knife

What You’ll Do:

First, measure the dimensions you’ll be covering with wallpaper. Will you do the sides of the fridge? Does the front panel wrap around the edges? Make sure you measure each space you’ll cover with wallpaper.
Choose and order your wallpaper. At first, Wendy tried to use a peel and stick option, but it didn’t go on well and it wasn’t easy to reposition. So instead, she purchased pre-pasted wallpaper, which worked a lot better because she could move it around and get the bubbles out.
Clean the surface of the fridge well before installing the wallpaper.
Cut out the wallpaper pieces with at least 2 inches of margin on each side.
Follow the wallpaper manufacturer’s directions for mounting the wallpaper, repositioning as necessary and using the flat edge tool to get rid of any bubbles.
Once you’re happy with how it looks, use the X-Acto knife to trim off the excess from each edge.

To see more of Wendy’s cabin in New York state and her home in Texas, follow @chairwhimsy on Instagram.