This ‘anti-trend’ Wisconsin lake cabin is full of thrifted treasures – and you book a stay

This is the latest instalment of The Inside Story, Wallpaper’s series spotlighting intriguing, innovative and industry-leading interior design.

This home marks a departure for The Inside Story. Not a grand build or lofty renovation, but a modest – almost poky – cabin on Lake Wandawega in Wisconsin. It’s a (totally unstaged) study in anti-trend interiors, cultural salvage and the idea that true luxury lies in provenance; not styled to appear vintage, but genuinely constructed from it.

The property’s history begins in the 1920s, when it was one of three tiny family-built cabins, sharing a single outdoor bathroom. In the 1950s, a stonemason took ownership, adding cladding, an indoor bathroom, a proper kitchen and two oversized stone fireplaces adorned with ‘pencil fossils’ – fertility symbols set into the mantels. By the 1970s, the cabin was home to an elderly PE teacher and her friend, a former college roommate who had become a nun. The cabin’s most recent chapter began when the team behind Camp Wandawega – a nostalgic ‘summer camp’-inspired resort near Elkhorn, Wisconsin – assumed stewardship and restored it, treating it as ‘a cultural object restored one artifact at a time’.

Over the course of nearly a year, the team deliberately resisted contemporary restoration clichés: no shiplap, no whitewashed surfaces. Instead, they focused on uncovering what already existed, in one case peeling back six layers of flooring to reveal the original tile. The result feels ‘less like renovation and more like ethnography’.

In the living room, original walnut panelling and cabinetry remain, as does the stonemason’s fireplace. Added: a carpet in ‘Hitchcock green’, its hue recalling dusty roadside motels and cocktail lounges, and furnishings including a Platner table found on Craigslist, 1940s Tyrolean chairs from Etsy, and a five-foot 1970s abstract oil painting. The space is layered with objects and curios: a folk-art ship sculpture, Frankoma pottery, and pieces drawn from Camp Wandawega’s own archive.

The bathroom, originally a deteriorating 1940s lean-to, was stripped back and rebuilt with custom-poured concrete walls and a sloped base, tinted in a variation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘Cherokee Red’. The standout pieces here are a robin’s-egg blue 1960s toilet and sink by industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss, discovered – improbably – in perfect condition in a Harley Davidson rider’s backyard seven hours away. A wood-lined skylight and a 1970s Yves Saint Laurent towel set, assembled from pieces scoured online, complete the space.

In the kitchen, beneath layers of plastic wood and successive decades of linoleum, lay the original 1940s tile. The original farm sink was retained, alongside a rare fold-out ‘Murphy sink’ typical of early tourist cottages. A Raymond Loewy-esque 1950s Kelvinator fridge and a Tappan appliance range sourced for free on Craigslist sit alongside a $70 Chromcraft table paired with 1940s Tyrolean chairs. A junk drawer in the kitchen revealed a time capsule of sorts, containing shot glasses from 50 years worth of parties.

The bedroom – diminutive at 8x10 feet – is wrapped entirely in wood panelling. The Hitchcock-green felt mat continues here, while furnishings include a Chinese MCM sideboard sourced via Facebook Marketplace, a mirror acquired during a McDonald’s parking-lot exchange, and 1940s barkcloth Navajo-print curtains. The headboard is a salvaged 1940s camp sign, and the bed is layered with textiles from across centuries: an 1880s Welsh coverlet, a 1940s woven spread and a vintage Bates plaid.

In a world dominated by high-end, high-spec resort interiors, this ‘little wooden shoebox’ of a home feels sincere – rooted in history, rich in narrative and effortlessly cool.