Portal to the Past

A young family writes the latest chapter of a storied 384-year-old cottage built in the oldest town on Cape Cod.

-  KELLY RYAN KEGANS

While their high school classmates were holding hands at the movies, sweethearts Stephenie and Chase Watts were spending their Friday nights wandering through Pottery Barn and Restoration Hardware, dreaming of someday decorating their own home. "Those were our date nights," Chase says.

Today, the couple, who now own an interior design studio (Watts Design House; @stepheniewatts), is more likely to spend their evenings cuddled up with their two children inside their 1639 shingled cottage in Sandwich, Massachusetts. "The house sat on the market for two months," says Chase, who is also a real estate agent and discovered the listing two-and-a-half years ago while scrolling on his phone. "I guess not everyone wants a house that's more than 380 years old."

The cottage is a time capsule, sitting on its original post-and-beam foundation that makes for occasionally uneven floors. Other timeworn quirks include low-beamed ceilings and multiple wood-burning fireplaces lined with the county's namesake Barnstable bricks. "It was around the late 1700s or early 1800s that the house got the facade that you see now," Stephenie says.

The couple learned about one of the home's early inhabitants from a keepsake bundle found in the attic by the previous owners. Scraps of satin ribbon and lace, a lock of auburn hair, and a handwritten recipe for loaf cake tell the story of a merchant and his wife who raised their family in the house during the 1800s. The discovery only reinforced the Wattses' resolve to become stewards of the cottage.