The living room's easy-going essence features a neutral palette, a cozy couch and found and beloved objects that makes Payne feel both at home and away from it all at the same time.
Creating the Cottage Look
You spend two weeks a year on vacation. Why not spend the other 50 living in a home that reminds you of it? Here's how:

Don't Fear the Cottage
"Cottage or country has become a dirty word because people think pink ducks. And that's just wrong," says interior designer Jo Boehr. She's referring to the country look that was trendy in the 1980s. Cottages can be quite elegant, like this one.

Seek Comfort in Elegance
Choose comfortable but classic pieces, like president's chairs, old oak chests, 1940s desks and seagrass furniture, which won't go out of style.

Accessorize Over Time
Keep your eye out for funky antiques from different eras. Items from the '40s, '70s and present create the look of a cottage on which three generations left their mark.

Use Old Items in New Ways
Old windowpanes can be converted into mirrors. French suitcases can be used as tabletops. Dining rooms can be used as sitting rooms, creating a more laid-back atmosphere.

Celebrate Wear and Tear
Cottages look happily broken in, as if all the joy of vacations with the family left laugh marks on the furniture. So choose some shabby-chic pieces that celebrate the beauty of imperfection.

Simplify
One reason vacation homes are so relaxing is that they are clutter-free. So pare down your home goods to the bare essentials — a couple sets of sheets and towels, a few magazines to peruse and your favorite books and games on the shelf.

Make Cleaning Easy
Cottages are designed to get sandy and salty. Nobody wants to scrub and scour while on vacation. So make your home easy to clean, with slip covers, rugs that can be hosed off if need be and surfaces that can just be wiped down.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
How often do cottage owners overhaul their decor? Never. Rather, they repair what's broken with whatever is available to them. So keep that tattered but well-built dresser, replacing the missing knobs with funky ones. It will make your home look both artful and cared for.
Jo Boehr received unique guidelines for designing the interior of this Cape Cod-style home in Fairway: Make it imperfect.

Homeowners Janet Payne and Tim Hinds wanted it to look like a cottage passed down through generations, with each adding furniture and souvenirs through the years.

"They didn't want it to look all fussed-up and perfect," Boehr says.

Payne was inspired by a cozy Canadian cabin where she and her husband had vacationed. There, the bath doubled as a tool shed, and the owner left his dog in the guests' care for the week.

They felt right at home.

Back at home in Kansas City, Payne says, "I just wanted it to feel like we were on vacation."

This is, in a way, a vacation home for them. Payne and Hinds divide their time between St. Louis and Kansas City, where their son and Payne's parents and siblings live. Payne works as an art consultant in both cities.

To create the look of an heirloom cottage, Boehr shopped at flea markets and antique malls for furniture and accessories from the '40s, '70s and today — quirky things she remembered her mother and grandmother having.

In fact, aspects of the home, like the vintage metal glider on the back porch, breathe timeless sophistication with a hint of quirkiness into the home. Beneath the glider, the hardwood floors are the color of the ocean at sunset. Artist David Penka painted them hues of sea foam, turquoise and pink, giving them the worn look of driftwood — only colorful. Big Mouth Billy Bass — the rubber fish that sings — is on the shelf above it.

"I wanted some of this stuff to just be silly," Boehr explains.

The multigenerational look is all about reinventing the old for present purposes.

Take the dining room, for example. In lieu of the traditional table and chairs, the family has a sitting room, with two president's chairs set cozily next to each other. A drop leaf table against the wall can be pulled out in case of a crowd. A round dinner table is in the living room.

This fits Payne and Hinds' casual entertaining style. They prefer barbecues to formal dinner parties. It also fits the cottage theme. After all, who dines while on vacation? Grabbing a burger is more like it.

Elsewhere in the house, Boehr used the resourcefulness evident in an old cottage. A small dresser in the guest bedroom was perfectly fine except for the lack of knobs to open the drawers. So she added funky jeweled ones. Boehr combined ready-made curtains with fabric to make custom ones at a lower price. And antique-looking flower prints, matted and framed, were cut out from a calendar Boehr bought in South Carolina.

She says resourcefulness creates an artfully designed home. "Don't look at things and people for who they are but what they can become," she suggests.

This house has since become a cozy but elegant cottage, albeit in a nontraditional vacation city.

Boehr says that though this home has a unique theme, it points to a trend toward designing homes for living, whether on vacation or not.

"People want things to be beautiful but they also want comfort," she says.