This Wisconsin Summer Cabin Feels Like Happy Hour

In the great room, Sarah updated an $8 pair of Cesca-style chairs found at Goodwill with a 1950s Hudson Bay blanket that belonged to her grandfather. “The blanket had holes, but his name was stitched on it,” she says.

The lofted hideaway (called “The Cave”) is accessed only by the rolling library ladder by Alaco Ladder Co. A brass ship porthole offers a bird’s-eye view of the great room.

“I wanted a cozy feeling, and that can be hard to do in a room with a 20-foot-tall vaulted ceiling,” Sarah says. Dark blue walls helped the cause, as did color-blocked draperies sewn from plaid blankets. A lily pad green Chesterfield sofa and a pair of vintage chartreuse chairs lighten the palette. Sarah embraced Jamie’s love of midcentury modern with the coffee table and glossy rusted red tiles by Fireclay Tile that surround the fireplace, where a prized velvet ship painting (a current collecting obsession of Sarah’s) sails above the wood mantel.

Now playing: “A Field Guide to Bird Songs” to help Sarah, a newfound “bird nerd,” identify her winged neighbors. “I heard my first barred owl call early on the porch one morning.”

Echoing the natural surroundings, the kitchen’s blue-and-green tile backsplash stretches to the exposed ceiling joists.

Souvenir name mugs are a light-hearted way to welcome the day.

Jamie’s brother, Bill, made the 9-foot table using an old slab of cherry wood. In the middle is a resin “river” displaying heirloom fishing lures that belonged to Sarah’s grandfather.

Underfoot, the stairs and landings are covered with bright plaid carpeting (“Cozy Escape” by Shaw), complemented by the yellow spines of her father’s 1980s National Geographic magazines.

Sarah, who loves a good style mash-up, embraced everything from country to kitsch in the lower-level guest room, which started with the Bonanza Steak House sign above the bed.

The ski-lined stairwell is a whimsical take on wall paneling. “Everybody puts skis in their cabins, but I wanted it to be over the top,” says Sarah.

“I wanted the basement to have a ’70s vibe,” Sarah says of the lower-level space, where board games are kept under Agatha’s watchful eye. (Agatha would be the raccoon sporting a Shriner fez hat.) Brown-and-cream Marmoleum checkerboard floors pair well with black-stained trim and walls clad with inexpensive fiberboard panels from Menards. “Everybody else is ripping this out or painting it; no one wants to buy it,” Sarah says with a laugh. She spray-painted a $10 brass light fixture black and found the quirky toile drapery fabric (look closely: there are aliens!) on Spoonflower (spoonflower.com).

Jamie and Sarah Anderson with their sons Thatcher and Simon, and dog Kinni