Designing a New Old Cottage with Collected Antiques and Vintage-Inspired Finds

_{This post is sponsored by Barn Light Electric, however all opinions are explicitly my own. This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, you can read my full disclaimer here.}

I’m so excited to hit publish on today’s post! We’re designing a new old cottage with collected antiques and vintage-inspired finds.

And today’s the day I finally get to take you behind the scenes with me to chat about the design process. I can’t wait to show you the mood boards I’ve been curating the past few months!

But first a moment for the cottage exterior and THE WINDOW of my dreams…

Ain’t she purdy?

I shared a little construction update and the window in my last blog post!

The cottage exterior has been moving right along. Which is very exciting because now that the house is “dried in” we get to start focusing more on the interior!

And today we finally get to chat about all the pretty things that will be going inside the cottage.

From the antiques we’ve been collecting, to the vintage-inspired lighting we’ll be adding all throughout the house. This post is going to be full of inspiration and ideas!

I can’t wait for you to see what all we’ve been planning, so let’s dive into it together! Pull up a chair, grab a coffee, and let’s chat about our new old cottage design…

What do you mean by “New Old Cottage”?

First things first, I want to clarify what I mean by new old cottage.

If you ask me, a new old cottage is one that blends the old and the new seamlessly. It’s a house that is built new, but one that looks like a much older house!

This could be seen in the way the house is constructed, the materials chosen, the decor. In our case, it’s a mixture of all of the above!

The goal in designing our new old cottage is to create a home that functions like a modern house would, but one that aesthetically looks and feels like an older home full of charm and character.

We want the cottage to look and feel like it could have always been here. Like it belongs!

A little back story in case you’re new to White and Woodgrain… My name is Brittany! Nice to meet ya.

My husband and I re re-built our family’s 1800’s farmhouse back in 2019.

And now we’re doing it again! Together with my parents, we’re building a new old cottage right down the gravel drive from our farmhouse.

New old houses are kind of my thing!

And this new old cottage has been such a fun and creative design project, and one that means a lot to me on a personal level too as it will be my parents’ new old home once construction is complete.

Designing the Cottage: a perfect blend of old and new

Our goal in designing our new old cottage is to create a home that functions like a modern house but feels like a much older home.

We want the cottage to be full of character and charm, so it makes sense to incorporate some truly old pieces into the design.

The goal is to blend authentically old pieces with new, vintage-inspired ones. We want to strike the perfect balance where the new finds complement the antique pieces, creating a timeless aesthetic that feels natural.

And that’s how you design a new old house!

Let me show you some of the pieces we’ve found, both old and new, and then I’ll walk you through how they all come together in the mood boards!

Antiques We’ve Collected for our New Old Cottage

Let’s start with the old…

A big part of what’s going to make the cottage feel like an old house is all the antique pieces we’ve been collecting to incorporate into the design.

Let me show you some of the old pieces we’ve found so far!

An Antique General Store Counter We’ll Use as a Kitchen Island

This old piece was a Facebook Marketplace find.

We drove all the way to Greenville, SC to pick it up from The North Porch’s booth at the Vintage Market of Greenville.

We plan to use this old store counter as a kitchen island here in the cottage. The shelves in the back are gonna provide so much storage!

We’ll be adding a countertop to this piece. The countertop will hang over the edge a little bit, just enough to slide a barstool underneath.

I can’t wait to get the island in place along with the rest of the kitchen cabinets!

This Antique Buffet We’ll Use as a Bathroom Vanity

We found this antique buffet at one of my favorite local shops – the Burgaw Antiqueplace!

We plan to convert it into a vanity for the primary bathroom. We’ll remove the wood top (don’t worry though, we’ll be using the wood top in another space) and then we’ll add a new countertop and a vessel sink.

Aren’t those pulls just perfection? I love the warmth of the old wood and the shimmer of the glass knobs!

A Vintage Medicine Cabinet for the Guest Bathroom

I found this old minty green medicine cabinet when we went to pick up the antique general store counter in SC.

We won’t be installing a regular vanity cabinet in the guest bathroom, so alternative storage solutions like wall hooks and a medicine cabinet are going to be very useful in that space!

I love that we were able to find an old piece to incorporate into the guest bathroom.

And I especially love how the color of this piece works with the other design elements we picked out… just wait till you see the guest bathroom mood board!

The sides if this cabinet weren’t painted when we bought it – so I’ve since cleaned it up and painted them to match the original color on the front.

Head to this post to see how it turned out and for my process for color matching antiques like this old medicine cabinet!

A Handful of Salvaged Doors with Original Brass and Crystal Knobs

Another Facebook Marketplace find… you won’t believe the deal I got on these antique doors!

I found a set of 4 doors that had been pulled from an old house in downtown Charlotte, NC.

The doors still had the original crystal and brass door knobs. AND they were pre-hung. The homeowner had removed the doorframe and doors all in one go.

Normally when you find an antique door for sale it’s just the door. So to find ones that were pre-hung and with the original door knobs… it’s like finding a unicorn!

And the best part of all is that we only paid $15 a door!!! Such a good deal, and it was well worth the drive to pick them up.

Now that you’ve seen some of the antique pieces. Let’s move on to the new, vintage-inspired finds…

Vintage-Inspired Lighting from Barn Light Electric

When it comes to things like lighting and appliances, we’re opting for new, vintage-inspired finds – ones that will meet today’s standards while still capturing the look and feel of their antique counterparts.

I found the prettiest vintage-inspired lighting from Barn Light Electric that truly hits the nail on the head!

The History Behind Barn Light Electric Company

If you’re new to Barn Light Electric, let me tell you a little about the company.

Barn Light Electric Company was founded in 2008 by Bryan and Donna Scott. This husband and wife team started out refurbishing antique lights part-time, and now they run Barn Light together.

Their company creates the most beautiful vintage-inspired lighting, all completely customizable from the size, to the colors, to the shapes… and they’re all made in the USA!

Now I didn’t know anything about their backstory at first. I knew about Barn Light Electric because I had found their schoolhouse light fixtures on Pinterest.

I just love the look of old schoolhouse style light fixtures!

Vintage-Inspired Lights for a New Old Cottage

When we started designing the cottage, I immediately thought about Barn Light’s vintage-inspired schoolhouse lights. I knew they would be the perfect lighting for the cottage!

Let me go ahead and show you all the fixtures we picked out for the cottage…

I’m swooning over these lights! They are absolutely stunning, and these are just the product photos. I can’t wait to show them to you in person.

They say lighting is like the jewelry of your home. And it makes sense! Lighting is one of the last things to be installed when you’re building a house, kindof like jewelry is the final touch of your outfit.

These vintage-inspired lights are going to be the perfect final touch in our new old cottage!

Click the links below for more info on each of these lights on Barn Light Electric’s website.

When the goal is to design a new old cottage… when the goal is for your home to function like a new house but feel like an old home… Barn Light Electric Company is the place to go for lighting!

It’s going to be so hard waiting for these to be installed in the cottage. But I’m excited to finally show you the designs of all the fixtures we picked out!

I think all of the vintage-inspired lights from Barn Light Electric will really complement the vintage and antique items we’ve been collecting for the cottage.

The lights are a huge part of the design and I’m so excited to see it all come together as we start making real progress on the cottage interior.

Let’s move on to the mood boards so you can see where each of these pretty lights will be going and how the design will all come together inside the cottage.

New Old Cottage Mood Boards

I’ve been talking about these mood boards for months over on my Instagram stories… and they’re finally done and ready to share!

Let’s scroll through them together and I’ll share what all we have planned out for each of these spaces.

The Cottage Exterior

The cottage exterior has come such a long way!

I added an inspo pic to the top right corner of the exterior mood boards showing an old house we were super inspired by.

(More on the inspo house coming soon… I’m working on an upcoming blog post where I’ll go more in depth about the exterior inspo, the layout, and more construction details.)

For the cottage exterior, we went with white board and batten siding, a galvanized metal roof, and a big, beautiful front door with lots of glass to match the windows and let lots of natural light.

You can’t tell from the photo but this door is very tall – I’m 5’4″ and I only come up to the horizontal line across the window part!

The two lights on either side of the front door are the Galvanized Wilcox Deep Boal Gooseneck Lights from Barn Light Electric. I love how they play off of the galvanized roof, and you’ll see that we decided to carry that same finish over onto the side porch as well.

Eventually we’ll hang an old fashioned porch swing on the front porch, to the right of the door. Can you picture it?

On the side porch you’ll see two Galvanized Seaside Sconce Lights from Barn Light hanging over the double doors. The fluted detailing adds such a playful touch to these lights which I think is perfect for a new old cottage!

Later on we plan to add a day bed swing to the left of the double doors for all the grandkids to swing on with my parents.

And maybe even an outdoor table with chairs too? My kiddos love a good porch picnic!

Let’s move on to the interior so you can see what we have planned inside the cottage!

The Cottage Kitchen

The kitchen is one of my favorite spaces inside the cottage so we’ll start there!

If you enter through the double doors on the side porch, the kitchen will be to your left.

One of the first things you’ll notice about this space is the color! We went with minty greens in this space after falling in love with these beautiful minty green retro style appliances.

I’ll link the mint green retro fridge and the mint green retro stove for ya in case you love them too or just want to check them out yourself.

After settling on a color for the appliances, I thought it would be fun sprinkle more green into the kitchen through the lighting.

We went with 2 vintage-inspired Primary Schoolhouse Stem Pendants from Barn Light to hang over the antique general store counter kitchen island.

Then we chose to add a few of those pretty, playful Seaside Gooseneck Lights – 2 of which will go over the window above the kitchen sink, and then 1 more will go over the kitchen counter to the left of the fridge.

The green color on all the cottage kitchen lights is called “Jadeite” and I can’t think of a more perfect color for our new old kitchen!

We found the pretty high back kitchen sink at Vintage Tub and Bath, and we decided to go with a chrome faucet to complement the chrome details on the appliances.

Oh, can’t forget the floors! The flooring in this space, as well as all throughout the cottage (except in the bathrooms) will be a pretty LVP flooring that looks like wide plank pine. Better photos to come of the flooring once it comes in.

The Primary Bathroom

Next up… the primary bath!

This space is a little more classic in terms of the design.

You’ll notice we kept it pretty neutral in the primary bath with lots of black and white and a little warmth from the antique wood buffet we’ll be converting into a vanity.

The vanity light is another vintage-inspired light from Barn Light. It’s a Primary Schoolhouse Gooseneck Light, and it will hang over the bathroom sink.

We went with a weathered brass finish on the gooseneck arm, and a bold black stripe detail on the globe.

I LOVE the black and white on the light fixture! We will be carrying those colors down to the flooring in this bathroom.

Fun fact: I’ll be doing all the tile work in this space myself!

Stay tuned for a DIY post where I’ll walk you through the “how to” for this fun project… but I wanted to give you a little preview / inspo pic of a penny tile pattern we love for this space!

The Guest Bathroom

Now that you’ve seen the primary bath… let me show you what we have planned for the guest bathroom!

This space will be used by guests that come to stay at the cottage, including all the grandkids. So we kept the design a little more playful and colorful for them!

We chose a vintage style high back sink – similar to the kitchen sink, only this one will be painted a light minty blue color on the bottom!

We are mounting the sink directly to the wall, so you’ll be able to see the little pop of color and I think it’s going to add so much personality to this space! Especially alongside all the other elements and subtle pops of color.

The old medicine cabinet we found will be mounted on the wall over the toilet. I plan clean it up, and paint the sides of this piece to match the light green color on the front.

We chose a Primary Schoolhouse Gooseneck Light to hang over the bathroom sink. The gooseneck arm will be in a galvanized finish, and the stripes around the globe are in the same jadeite color you saw in the kitchen.

Last but not least, the tile! We found a pretty mint green penny tile that can look green or blue depending on the way the light hits it. I can’t wait to show it to you close up, but I think it’s going to tie all the minty colors together in this guest bathroom.

We’ll be doing a fun pattern with the tile in here, not exactly like the one in the inspo pic above but similar. Stay tuned…

New Old Cottage FAQ’s

I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on the mood boards and the designs we’ve been working on… in the meantime, I thought I’d answer some of your questions about the cottage.

what about your farmhouse?

I’ve gotten a lot of people asking this question, and I totally get it!

The farmhouse will always be home. We aren’t moving, and we aren’t selling.

The cottage is just a short walk from our farmhouse, and it will be home to my parents once construction is complete.

Who is your builder?

Randy Miller is our builder and we have been so happy with his work!

I wish I had known about him when we re-built the farmhouse. But I’m glad we were able to work with him on the cottage!

what is the color palette for the cottage?

Our farmhouse is pretty neutral – hence the name White and Woodgrain.

But as you saw in the mood boards, you can expect to see a little more color in the cottage. Especially in the kitchen and guest bathroom! Think minty greens and blues, and a little bit of Jadeite green mixed in too.

what’s the layout like?

The cottage will be just under 1300 sq. ft. with 2 bedrooms, and 2 full baths and an open concept living area.

I just published a new blog post with updated photos of all throughout the cottage. The new post is sort-of like a mid-construction photo tour!

Click the link for all the nitty gritty details about building our new old cottage, from the house plans we chose, modifications we made throughout the house, how we’re adding “old house character” to the home, and so much more!

what does rest of the construction timeline look like?

We broke ground on the cottage in October of 2024.

So right now we’re about 5 months into the build. The house is “dried in”, meaning we have a roof, siding, windows, and doors.

The electrical, plumbing, and heating and air have all been roughed in, and the dry wall is complete.

After that we’ll install the interior doors and trim, paint, cabinets, flooring, tile, countertops, finishing out the bathrooms, plumbing, lighting, hardware, etc.

There’s still a lot of things left to do, and I can’t wait to take you along for the rest of the journey!

We hope to wrap up construction by the end of May, potentially sooner.

If you made it to the end of this post, God bless ya friend! Thanks for hanging out with me today and letting me talk your ears off about the cottage.

If you’re not already I’d love to personally invite you to join my email list. It’s a great way to keep in touch and get all the behind the scenes info as we work to finish the cottage!

I’ve had so much fun working on the designs so far, and I can’t wait to share more of our new old cottage with you as we get closer to the finish line.

Until next time…

Love, Brittany