Houzz Tour: A Bolt of British Charm in Brooklyn

A highly decorated New York row house takes its cues from the English countryside

Jess McBride May 26, 2016

Houzz Contributor. Custom decorating professional and content creator for the home design industry with a lifelong passion for color, pattern, and texture of every "stripe"

Houzz Contributor. Custom decorating professional and content creator for the home... More

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For two magazine editors-turned-designers, a historic Brooklyn, New York, row house was a story waiting to be told. From the looks of it, you’d never guess that this English-country charmer lies just off Flatbush Avenue, one of the borough’s main arteries. But a year’s worth of renovations and an artist’s eye for mixing patterns and colors have transformed this once-neglected Tudor into a veritable design showcase.

Madcap Cottage

Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: Designers Jason Oliver Nixon and John Loecke of Madcap Cottage
Location: Brooklyn, New York
Size: Three bedrooms, two bathrooms

When Jason Oliver Nixon and John Loecke moved into their home, their Prospect-Lefferts Gardens neighborhood was still up-and-coming, flying low under the radar despite its brisk 10-minute walking distance to many of the borough’s hot spots. In an article as recent as 2014, the New York Times was still referring to the enclave as “Brooklyn’s best-kept secret.”

The couple wanted their home to feel as though they and their visitors had stepped off Flatbush Avenue and into the English countryside. Perhaps the best example of this is the home’s dining room, which is the perfect setting for tea and crumpets.

Madcap Cottage

The tablescape is a microcosm of the pair’s signature aesthetic, a unique and ever-evolving mix of patterns and antiques from both family and foreign lands.

Atop chargers from Loecke’s grandmother sit Wedgwood plates designed by British fashionista Jasper Conran, which are themselves a nod to the couple’s avowed Anglophilia. At any given time, the table might be set with linens picked up in Europe or Guatemala, or maybe custom-made placemats just for fun. “We have a cottage industry of folks we’re lucky enough to work with who can make anything for us,” Nixon says.

Madcap Cottage

The home’s design continually evolves. The couple says that even with their wealth of design knowledge and experience, small-course corrections are made here and there.

Originally, they painted the living room a pale blue, but realized soon after that the light from their two lone windows didn’t penetrate far enough into the long, skinny room to keep their darling blue walls from feeling frosty and cold. So they switched gears and chose a soft pink instead.

Madcap Cottage

The living room’s parquet floors were damaged by contractors during the renovation, but rather than splurge on budget-busting period reproduction parquet, the couple made lemonade out of lemons and replaced the original flooring with a medium-grade parquet that they then had painted in Farrow & Ball deck paint.

Their unique floor treatment ended up lightening the room even further and becoming a feature in and of itself. Like most rooms in this home, the ceiling is wallpapered; the chosen Thibaut trellis pattern complements the Fowler Pink paint on the walls.

Madcap Cottage

Meet Pedro the monkey, picked up abroad and festooned with a custom fabric lampshade. Pedro is one of many characters cohabiting with Nixon and Loecke; the pair have been known to name some of their cherished pieces. For example, Sid and Nancy, named for the Sex Pistols bassist and his ill-fated girlfriend, are a pair of monkey sconces that live on the kitchen walls.

Adding a little mythology to a room is fun, and after all, Nixon says, “design should be fun. Good underpinnings and great tailoring are given, but when you walk into your room, it should put a smile on your face.”

Madcap Cottage

The English-cottage theme continues into the kitchen, where custom cabinetry creates a highly functional kitchen that maximizes the room’s layout. The farm sink from Kohler and dark stone tile from Ann Sacks look as if they’ve always been there, and the marble countertops from Home Depot defy easy association with any particular era. Likewise, choosing a lemonade-colored Viking range (not pictured) allowed the couple to sidestep any possibility of the space’s looking dated in the future. Look closely and you’ll notice the sunny yellow paint on the interior of the cabinets, which references the range and is a surprising touch.

Madcap Cottage

In this dynamic sitting room, we find a large-scale work of art inherited from family. It hangs over a Barbara Barry desk from Baker Furniture. The chaise longue is a Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams piece, re-covered in an eclectic mix of patterns. The vintage chinoiserie table lamps and Venetian gondolier wallpaper were steeper investments than the area rug from The Rug Co. The mix of price points reinforces the design team’s philosophy that good design doesn’t need to be expensive to be expressive.

Madcap Cottage

The pair got their treasures from a variety of sources, ranging from websites to antiques dealers locally and abroad. They fondly refer to road trips with vintage sofas tied to the roof of their Suburu and seem to delight in their propensity for rehabbing existing pieces and layering in vintage finds rather than buying new. As Nixon says: “You can go to a retailer and buy a shiny new object, but where’s the story behind it?”

It was also important to ensure that the entire home had a comfortable, relaxed feel; the pair didn’t want any of their rooms to feel off-limits to guests and were careful to ensure that the furniture wasn’t so precious that pets and toes couldn’t linger there freely.

Madcap Cottage

There is so much art to be found in this home, “some of it good, some of it not so good, and some of it mediocre,” Nixon says. Whether it’s maharaja portraits in the petite foyer or the breathtaking gallery wall lining the stairs, there is always something to look at.

The couple says that the key to mixing artworks of all styles is the same as designing any space, which is to infuse it with so much personality and so many storied objects that visitors discover something new each time.

Madcap Cottage

When they are frequently asked for advice on mixing colors successfully, the couple suggests that too many people are afraid to commit. Mixing colors doesn’t need to be complicated: Start by choosing a color and running it around the room in different hues and shades. Even if one room is predominantly red and another is green, such as the master bedroom, you will still find traces of each color sprinkled throughout.

Madcap Cottage

The entire third floor of the home is a master suite with an unconventional open floor plan. To the right of the stairs is the bedroom, and to the left, an open bathroom leading to a deck outfitted with chairs and an umbrella.

Because there are no surrounding buildings with views into the room, the couple was able to maintain a relationship with the outdoors. The tile floor is painted with deck paint, and the shower, tiled in Ann Sacks penny mosaic, evokes an outdoor vacation-house feel when the patio door is left open.

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