Summer Livin&#39;

Summer Livin'

So, we had an early Spring blizzard here on the Cape.

Turns out RoyRoy loves the snow - though he nearly got knocked over by the wind. We still have a lot of icy snow drifts today and when we were walking up my driveway, he suddenly stopped and was kind of huddled in one place, then scooted over to me and literally got on top of my feet. He must have had a piece of ice wedged in his paw. Good thing he only weighs 13 lbs and can easily be scooped up!

The current issue of Cape Cod Life magazine was sitting on my coffee table mocking me yesterday... Actually, we won't see trees like this until early/mid May.

Interior design by Linda Merrill

Anyway, this is NOT how we want to welcome spring here. Tomorrow, however, I'm headed up the coast to Gloucester, Massachusetts to start a beach house project. This is a good sized new construction house that is nearly complete and I'll be designing and planning all the window treatments in the house. Usually, I decorate an entire room or house, but in this case, the homeowners have decided to focus on getting the house built and the windows covered and then go from there. While there's a lot of opportunity to create beautiful window treatments with pretty fabrics, it's also a project that has a lot of practical issues to think about as well - sun and temperature control is important, as is understanding how corrosive the salt air is when living near the ocean.

Interior design by Linda Merrill, photo by Paul Blackmore for Cape Cod Magazine

My recent Truro, MA beach house project that was featured in Cape Cod Magazine had large glass walls and simple dark solar shades so that the entire ocean-side of the house was opened up as much as possible.

This new project is a classic shingle style house with lots of smaller windows and I'm very much looking forward to welcoming Spring (the real thing, not the snowy version!) with visions of pretty rooms, pretty views and some casual beachy style.