This Artist Has Spent Four Years Turning Her 1911 Alabama Cottage Into a Work of Art

Most first-time homeowners rarely move in knowing exactly what they want—especially if they are renovating, decorating, and designing it themselves. Artist Liz Allison, however, is not most first-time homeowners. She, her husband, and their two little boys moved into their Arts & Crafts-era cottage in Birmingham, Alabama, four years ago and have slowly but surely made every change—big and small—themselves. “It’s taken several months more than we ever expected, but we’re so glad that we’re restoring it, not just renovating it. We’re trying to do era-appropriate restoration,” she says.

In fact, the age of the home was the driving force behind their home. “I don’t want always straight lines and specific aesthetics. I want it to have that lived-in human touch,” Allison insists. Plus, as an artist, Allison got to put her personal touch on almost everything. “I’ve painted on my stairs. I’ve painted on lampshades. I kind of joke that no surface is safe in our house. If it can be painted, it probably has.”

Second to her own artistic additions, everything in Allison’s home is one-of-a-kind, and that was a very intentional choice. She adds, “I think that’s the most important thing I think about with our house: it’s layered. Nothing’s from a big-box store. We’re actually collecting from antique stores. We’ve got lots of knickknacks.”

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The Art of a First Impression

The living room is the first room one sees upon entering the home, so Allison wanted it to feel the “most polished” for that very reason. How she managed that goal was hardly an easy feat. “We came in and color-drenched this room,” she insists. “People always ask what color this is, and it’s called Oval Room Blue by Farrow & Ball, and I loved this color because blue sometimes reads cool, but here I feel like it feels so warm and cozy.” And if there is one phrase Allison wants to associate with her home, it’s warm and cozy.

Of course, Allison didn’t swath the room in that warm-toned blue and call it a day; she actually took it a step further. “We decided to use the stairs as my canvas. You’ll see little houses painted, some folk art, which leads us to this corner that I painted,” she says. “With murals specifically, your painting has to actually blend with the architecture; they need to kind of sing to one another.”

As for the actual decoration, you won’t find anything from a mass-market retailer. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find anything available for purchase online. Truly, everything in Allison’s home is a collected treasure she nabbed from family or discovered in an antique shop. “I’ve collected these pieces over years,” the artist adds. “There are lots of little bits and bobs from France and things from my great-grandmother, who I think I got a lot of my creativity from.”

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Four Rooms Become One

The living room may be the most polished, but the kitchen is Allison’s biggest point of pride because she and her husband renovated it entirely themselves. She says, “We put a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and exhaustion into it, but I’m really proud of how far we’ve come.” Perhaps that pride comes from the fact that this large space that houses both the kitchen and the dining nook used to be four smaller rooms. Now, it’s a light and airy space with plenty of natural light.

We couldn’t ogle at the kitchen without briefly discussing the backsplash, which is not what you’d expect. Allison hired a ceramicist from a local women-owned business, and they custom-made these square tiles. “Then I painted a mural on tile, but the style is Delft, so it’s very common in Amsterdam,” she says.

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Old Bones, New Life

Say what you will about reclaimed beams, but this one is special because it’s reclaimed from this very house. You’d never know it from looking at it, but the beam used to be drenched in coal dust. Alison explains: “In the 1900s, they heated this house with coal: A big truck would come down the street, and the workers would shovel coal into the basement. When we were renovating, my husband went downstairs and found that coal wall. He cleaned it up and built this custom-made beam that now lives in the kitchen-dining room.”

Another unexpected room that’s hard to imagine in its original state is the cozy family room, which used to be, as Allison describes “sad, beige plaster room stuffed with furniture.” Their first order of business was clearing everything out and painting the whole room white. They lived with it for a year and realized white was not the vibe for two small boys, so she went in the complete opposite direction: “I’m obsessed with this William Morris wallpaper. It’s very appropriate because he is like the king of the Arts and Crafts movement,” Allison says. “What I love about this wallpaper is that it is not digitally printed; it has real layers of paint on it.” Fitting, if you ask us.

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An English Countryside Retreat

If you’re looking at this room and thinking it looks like it was copied and pasted from a manor house in the English countryside, you’d be correct. “What we wanted to do with this room is make it feel like a layered English countryside. Just very peaceful, but with personality.” Quite a bit of that personality came in the form of another William Morris wallpaper.

The couple’s favorite element of the bedroom, though, is the fireplace, which is original to the home’s architecture. “We love this fireplace because we added some folk art to it. Then we added my Delft tiles that I showed you downstairs in the kitchen onto the surround. This is all original, and so is this tile down here.”