Rosehill Cottage, Cameron Diaz's holiday home

I love to watch movies like "The Midsommer Murders" for English village houses, those low cottages with wooden beams and thatched roofs (sometimes). Whenever I see such a house at the beginning of a movie I'm sure to stay pinned to the couch until the end, hoping that the director has done as much interior footage as possible and I'll get a good look at the old furniture, the narrow wooden staircase or the rustic kitchen. This is how I was a few years ago when I first saw the movie "Holiday", starring Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet. Kate's character lived in one of those cottages, which I loved. You can imagine how happy I was when I came across a rendering of the inside of the house. I'm thinking of showing it to you, especially as there was a surprise at the end.

Entry is through a small wooden door, as befits an authentic cottage. An old, simple, wooden coat hook and an equally simple, also wooden, side table line the entrance.

Immediately ahead is the narrow wooden staircase up to the upstairs bedroom, which I'll come back to in a moment.

We stay on the ground floor, however, to see the kitchen to the right of the entrance, an open kitchen, but not in the American style, when the kitchen is a whole with the living room, but separate, with its own identity. It's decorated in the purest rustic English style, with old appliances, blue patterned crockery and short curlicues with flowers trapped in wooden galleries. A little eerie, but not for England, is the fireplace, built next to the stove and topped with poles of pots. The simple wooden furniture is blue-gray, perfectly matching the design of the fireplace.

On the other side is the living room, dominated by a sofa with wooden legs and handles, generous armchairs and, of course, the fireplace. A small library is built in a niche next to the fireplace, under the window. Between the armchairs and the sofa is a special little table upholstered in blue velvet. In each corner is a small table with lamps. The Persian rug, a mix of blue, beige, burgundy and white, matches perfectly with the coffee table and cushions on the sofa.

Downstairs is also a space that could pass as a library, where book shelves are built directly into the wall around the rear entrance door. A comfortable armchair between two asymmetrical small tables and a small desk complete the study atmosphere.

We go upstairs to the bedroom and bathroom. A tiny attic bathroom with an even smaller bathtub. Still, you've got everything you need to make the bathroom feel inviting.

The bedroom, dominated by the generous metal bed, is decorated in the same typical English style.There is also a fireplace, there are baskets for wood and magazines, and on the walls, between the vertical beams, there are paintings of various shapes and sizes. There are two old bedside tables in place of bedside tables, and in front of the bed is a simple Chinese-style sofa.

The whole house exudes...Englishness, it exudes authenticity and looks over 100 years old.

And now, the surprise. The house was built specifically for the movie in just 7 weeks, during which time both design and construction was done. Even the tree next door is also a fake, built with the house. But the entire interior was decorated as if the house was real, using authentic furniture. Unfortunately, when the filming was finished, the house was demolished, but the memory of it remains in the movie and in the photos above.

And in my heart, which was totally won over by this cottage. And in the future, I will totally ignore this "detail" and re-watch the movie with the same pleasure.

source: betweennapsontheporch.net