Sometimes even the most agreeable couples don’t see eye to eye.

When Sandy and Bill Brock came across a cottage on Spa Creek in the heart of the Annapolis historic district, it was love at first sight for Bill, a retired U.S. Senator from Tennessee. He adored the view of the creek and the proximity of the house to the water. But Sandy, an interior designer who owns Sandy Mitchell Design in Annapolis, saw the house, well, differently. “The kitchen was in the back and it was dark,” she recalls. “There wasn’t a good flow for entertaining, and the fireplaces were off-center, making it difficult to arrange furniture. There was no foyer and no walls for sofas in the living room. The master bath was dreadful.”

But the draw of the water eventually won Sandy over, and the couple decided to sell their sprawling place in Ferry Farms (where they had lived for five years) to buy the Revell Street home. Of course, they had major renovations in mind.

The Brocks first fell in love with the Annapolis lifestyle in 1986. While living in Washington at the height of Bill’s career, they purchased a weekend place in Eastport. They were hooked on the casual lifestyle and made Annapolis their main residence the very next year.

After fifteen months of renovations, they moved into this gracious European colonial cottage, a style that Sandy playfully describes as “barefoot elegance.”

Most of the home reflects Sandy’s interior as well as architectural design skills, but for architectural assistance and an occasional creative nudge she called upon Marta Hansen-Allbright, an Annapolis-based architect. “The house had been expanded a couple of times and it showed. It needed to be unified,” says Hansen-Allbright. “We wanted to bring more authenticity back to the house.”

The team added operable shutters and removed flimsy outdoor lattice paneling. The original balcony was cantilevered and its columns widened. An old garage was removed and the front yard re-contoured to create the mood of a quaint English country garden.
The backyard deck—with its sweeping vistas of Spa Creek—includes an egg-shaped pool that the Brocks call the “golden egg” because it took so long for approval (it could only be five feet deep, the maximum depth allowed because of the water table). The pool’s deep blue interior, which is made of Pebble Tech, a special treatment with actual pebbles in the mortar, holds heat and reflects the sky.

The home’s interior posed several decorating challenges. “The entry and living room area was the most difficult space to do in my design career. There were no walls, so I tried to visually separate the rooms,” says Sandy. Since the house didn’t have a formal foyer, she created a transition area for guests to shed the outdoors and get their bearings by painting a bold checkerboard pattern on the entry’s wood floor. Its colors pick up the green in the kitchen and the yellow on the walls. Sandy purchased several antique wood and glass doors from The Brass Knob, an architectural savage store in Washington, D.C., and created a screen to divide the entry area from the living room.
The hundred-year-old doors, with their original glass intact, once adorned New York’s Roosevelt Hotel. They provide a sense of enclosure without blocking the water view.
The Brocks are fixtures on the Annapolis social scene, and their kitchen proves it. (A second caterer’s kitchen can be found on the lower level.) “I was nervous about adding a very contemporary modern stainless steel island to the overall cottagey look,” says Sandy. “I thought, ‘It’s going to look terrific or awful.’” She followed her instinct and abandoned hard-and-fast rules. Now the contemporary island invigorates the space.

The family room’s centerpiece is a voluptuous white ruffle-edged sectional that makes light of a dining room tabletop recast as a coffee table. “I couldn’t find a coffee table big enough to work with such a large sofa,” she says. “[And] I wanted something I didn’t have to worry about since we frequently sponsor midshipmen and they like to put their feet up.” Sandy has a fondness for children’s chairs; several are scattered throughout the family room. Cuddling up to the large sofa are a nineteenth-century green-and-white antique child’s chair paired with a full-size custom-made pink and white ottoman.

Her love of children’s things extends outside as well. The Brock’s charming dollhouse—big enough for several kids to play in—is tucked on the edge of the waterfront and is embellished with flower boxes and faux shutters that are accented with cutout hearts. It has moved with them from house to house, a favorite retreat for their twelve grandchildren, ages three to twenty-one. “When we were planning to move to the historic district, we thought, ‘What kind of permits do we need for this?’ But it turns out it’s considered a piece of furniture,” Sandy adds.

Bill’s illustrious career unfolds in numerous mementos on the second and third floors; a walk up the staircase is a walk through history. A series of black-and-white photos of the Brocks posing with a variety of presidents and the powerful adorn the wall. The patriotic color scheme on the deck emphasizes the life of this former senator, who despite several high-profile positions (including Secretary of Labor in the Reagan cabinet, U.S. Trade Representative and chairman of the Republican National Committee) is best remembered as the senator who solidly beat longtime Tennessee incumbent Senator Al Gore, Sr., in 1970. 

Despite the Brocks’ different first impressions, they share one common bond: a firm belief that a home should exude comfort, ease, beauty, and style. It is said that decorating is a form of dreaming out loud. If that is true, this home provides some very sweet dreams.

Mary Ann Treger writes from her Annapolis home.