Bill and Sande Dyott have a great appreciation for American antiques—they’ve collected them for years. Perhaps that’s what drew them to inquire about the 1902 colonial revival house in Annapolis, even though they weren’t looking to move. “Because it was for sale we thought, out of curiosity, we’d gotake a look at it,” Bill recalls. Liking what they saw, the Dyotts sold their home in Severna Park and bought the Annapolis home ten years ago. “The house still had all of its original features because it hadn’t been renovated since the 1920s,” Bill continues. “As far as restoring and renovating, that makes it a much easier process.”

The house was structurally sound but cosmetically, as Bill says, “a wreck.” Warrens of small rooms cut up the natural flow of the house, plaster was peeling and water-damaged, there were holes in ceilings and places where the previous owners had attempted to fix things, but apparently had run out of steam. Worse yet, the staircase to the third floor was leaning rather precariously away from the wall that anchored it.

This did not deter the Dyotts, who love a project and could see the potential in the house. They saw it as a comfortable retreat and a perfect canvas for their vast array of collections and early- American antiques.

Over the course of the two-year renovation, they tore out several walls at the rear of the house to create a spacious open-plan kitchen/family room and added a screened-in porch that nestles into the back garden. They also reduced the house’s seven small bedrooms to five, all while maintaining the original floors, plaster, and doors. Sande describes the finished house as “eclectic, relaxed, fun, and interesting—definitely interesting. It’s filled with things we love.”

When the dust cleared, the couple started to design the interior around their art and antiques collections. Sande, who comes from a long line of collectors, inherited her antique trains from her father; her interest in 1950s rooster dishes, displayed in the kitchen, came from her Aunt Mary Ellen; and her love for candy jars was inspired by her Aunt Bernadine. When she and Bill, who own Severna Flowers & Gifts in Severna Park, married some thirty years ago, they started their own collections, which range from quilts to 1930s Art Deco lithographs. “We want people to feel, when they come into our home that, yes, we collect antiques, but it isn’t a museum,” says Bill.

Amid their many pieces of early American furniture, including a set of Baltimore painted chairs and a circa-1843 harvest table, old items take on new life. An old shuffleboard scoreboard becomes the place to make grocery lists, old quilts are thrown over the arms of comfy sofas, and stoneware crocks contain vivid floral arrangements. Perhaps their oldest collection is some fifty silhouettes, grouped in a large, bold wall display. The highlight of the pieces, which date from 1700 to the mid-1800s, is a rare example by an artist named Honeywell. Born without arms, the artist would cut her silhouettes with a scissors held in her mouth. 

The couple loves it when friends come over and take time to look at each nook and cranny to see what wonders they hold. The process of growing and editing their collections and style has been an act of love and appreciation for a design aesthetic they enjoy. “We chose everything in this house, and no one else is going to have it in their house,” says Sande. “It’s ours alone, and everything we’ve bought we remember where we were when we bought it. It all has memory.”

Christianna McCausland writes from Arlington, Va.