Before They Were Guest Rooms, We Lived in Them

My family has run this inn for four generations.

And at one point, we didn’t just run it. We lived in it.

For about six months, when I was five or six years old, a section of Stanton House Inn was our home. My parents’ bedroom. My childhood bedroom. The TV room behind the kitchen. Those rooms are now guest rooms.

And I still think about that when I walk past them.

Every room in this house had a life before it was a guest room. This post walks through three of them:

• Where they came from

• What we changed and why

• And the kind of guest who tends to love each one

I walk through all three rooms in the video below: their history, what we changed, and who they tend to suit.

Room 16: The Room You Trust

Room 16 was my parents’ bedroom.

When you’re a child living in a bed and breakfast, your parents’ bedroom is the one room in the entire building that is actually, completely private. Being called in there meant one of two things. Either something very good was about to happen, or you were in trouble. Most of the time it was the latter.

It was a serious room. A grown-up room.

When we converted this wing to guest rooms, Room 16 became one of our smaller first-floor queens. For a while it held its own. Then a thoughtful guest told us they hadn’t slept well. That the room was noisier than expected in the morning, and it wasn’t quite delivering what the rest of the house promised.

I could have been defensive. Instead, I thought: they’re right.

The job of Room 16 isn’t to be some showstopper. It’s to be the small, serious back bedroom you trust to give you a good night’s sleep.

So that’s what we fixed. The windows face northwest (gentle, indirect light) and we layered soft ivory cotton curtains over the Roman shades we already had. That combination does both jobs:

• It makes the room dark when you want it dark

• And it softens the space in a way the shades alone couldn’t

We added a large wool area rug, which absorbs sound and warms the room underfoot. And two pieces of furniture:

• A rattan lounge chair with a floor lamp

• And a small antique writing desk

I had been planning to not have a desk at all here until I saw it and couldn’t help myself from bringing this one home.

Both are modest in scale. Both are actually usable.

I think about the solo traveler coming back from a long family day in Greenwich. They close those curtains, sit in that chair for ten minutes with a book, and then actually sleep. That’s what this room is for.

Room 16 is for the guest who always ends up loving the smallest, quietest room in the house. You know who you are. Solo travelers. Guests in town for a family visit or work trip. Couples on a short stay who’d rather have a room with a story than one with extra square footage.

Room 16 is a first-floor queen with a private entrance and a door into the main house.

Room 18: The One I Actually Slept In

Room 18 was my childhood bedroom.

Before it was my bedroom, it was a sleeping porch. If you’re not familiar:

Before air conditioning, old houses had semi-outdoor spaces where the family slept in summer to stay cool.

The theory was sound.

In this house, the reality was that the walls weren’t particularly well insulated:

• Hot in summer

• Cold in winter

And there was a private exterior entrance that apparently caused some parental anxiety.

I don’t remember being troubled by it. For me, it was easy access to the century-old copper beech outside, where I could dig for bugs.

That entrance still exists. Now it’s one of the things guests appreciate most. You can arrive from the parking area, get into the room in about thirty seconds, and all without passing through the main house. A completely different selling point than it had when I was six.

When we updated the room, the problem was straightforward: this room is always going to be small. So stop apologizing for that and make it exceptional at what a small room can actually do.

The answer was the bathroom.

We pulled out the old bathtub and replaced it with a walk-in shower behind a glass door, a pedestal sink, and white tile throughout. Glass keeps the space visually open. A pedestal sink doesn’t block the floor. White tile reflects light. We invested more per square foot in that bathroom than we would in a larger room, deliberately. Because in a small room, the bathroom is a significant proportion of the whole experience. It worked well enough that this bathroom became the template for how we’ve updated bathrooms across the house since.

The room itself we kept simple. White walls (a member of our team had been trying to move me away from gray for a while, and she was right) with yellow as a quiet accent color. West-facing light in the afternoons makes it warm without trying. Blackout curtains. A comfortable mattress.

It didn’t get bigger. It just got better at being what it is.

Room 18 is for the guest who doesn’t need a lot of room. What they need is a great shower, a proper bed, and a room that feels thought about. Solo travelers. Short-stay couples. Guests who are moving around and just need a calm, well-made place to land.

Room 18 is a ground-floor queen with a private entrance near the parking area.

Room 14: The Den (Nobody Was Performing Anything in There)

Room 14 was the family TV room.

Tucked right behind the kitchen. Not where you had guests. Not where you had serious conversations. Where you collapsed after dinner. And on Friday nights, it was where we ordered pizza and watched a movie together.

That room had a quality I think about when I make design decisions. The sounds of the kitchen nearby. Nobody performing anything. You could just be in it.

There’s a kind of comfort that comes from a room with no performance pressure. Where nothing is asking you to appreciate it.

Here’s what actually kicked off the renovation. This past January, during a cold snap, a pipe froze and then thawed. And then leaked. Into Room 14’s carpet.

Old houses make their own renovation schedules.

We had planned to update this room anyway. The pipe just moved everything up the calendar, abruptly and not on my terms.

I described it at the time as the room rising from the ashes like a sopping wet phoenix. But being forced to pull the carpet gave us the chance to make the room what it always wanted to be.

The walls are a warm neutral that reads almost like plaster in afternoon light. It doesn’t fight anything in the room. It settles. We layered a wool rug over the new carpet in muted tones of cream and brown. It adds acoustic softness and that collected, inhabited quality that makes a space feel lived-in rather than staged.

The seating was deliberate. Two chairs with a proper table between them, oriented for actual use: for conversation, for reading, for having somewhere to put a drink. Not placed near the fireplace as decoration. In a lot of hotel rooms, chairs are furniture. These ones are for sitting in.

The gas fireplace is there, and it’s real. On a fall or winter evening, it changes the room.

And then there’s the entrance. Room 14 is the only one of these three without an interior door into the main house. That is, the private entrance is the entrance. You arrive, come straight into your room, and the Inn is there if you want it. Morning coffee on the patio. Easy access to the pool and garden. Late returns without disturbing anyone. If you’re traveling with a dog, that private entrance makes early walks and late evenings simple.

Room 14 is for the guest who prefers a den to a stage. Couples decompressing. Pet owners who want easy access and no fuss. It’s the room guests come back to most quietly and most consistently. Not always the most discussed. But reliably rebooked.

I think it has something to do with what it used to be. A room where nobody was performing anything.

Room 14 is a ground-floor king with a gas fireplace, private entrance, and patio.

What the Rooms Taught Me

Three rooms. Former parents’ bedroom. Former childhood bedroom. Former TV room.

None of them are the most spectacular rooms in the house. None of them have the biggest fireplace or the most sweeping view. What they have is history I actually know.

And I think that changes how you design a room. When you know what a space was before, you’re not just arranging furniture. You’re in a conversation with the room about what it wants to keep and what it wants to let go of.

Room 16 wanted to keep its composure. So we made it quieter. Room 18 wanted to stop apologizing for being small. So we made it exceptional at what a small room can do. Room 14 wanted to stay a back parlor. So we let it.

This is the first in what I hope will be a long series. There are a lot of rooms in this house with stories in them.

And if one of these rooms sounds like yours, you can browse all our accommodations here.