Family made, with a California-cool spirit: That’s how Alison and Jay Carroll describe Wonder Valley, their olive oil-turned-skincare and haircare company that’s gained a cult following over the past ten years.
It’s also how one could sum up this tumbledown cottage that they revitalized together: colorful, hip, sustainability minded.
Except the cottage is not in California at all: not in Joshua Tree, where the couple also has a house, or even on the West Coast. It’s on Bailey Island, Maine. Here’s how they wound up on a tiny cove across the country:
“Buying BIBS (we call it the Bailey Island Beach Shack) furthers my belief that the home finds you,” Alison says. “We spent years searching in Maine. This was pre-pandemic times when you had, more or less, the pick of the litter and it was generally a pretty mellow and non-competitive process. Then 2020 happened, and it felt like all of a sudden the whole world was very interested in Maine real estate. We lost five homes we put offers on that summer and drove back west for the winter with our tail between our legs.
“A month later, our realtor called us about a foreclosure auction on Bailey Island. Jay’s family has been coming here for generations, so it’s special to us; it’s our happy summer place. We decided to go for it, sight unseen. Our good friend Carter Smith, who has an incredible eye, went to the open house and gave us the thumbs up. For the auction, Carter and our realtor FaceTimed us from the lobster restaurant next to the house. The service was spotty and it was hard to follow. We were three hours behind, sitting in our pajamas at 6 a.m., when we learned we won. A few months later we drove back cross-country with our tools and went to work.”
The house was in rough shape, but the couple got to work tearing out the purple carpet, fixing a leaky roof, and adding on a mudroom and bedroom. “But the first order of business was to buy a little boat and set up a mooring right in front of the house,” Alison says. “If we were going to be slinging hammers and sleeping on sawdust, at least we would have the saving grace of being out on the water.”
“For several years now we’ve split time between the high desert and our small island in Maine; we do this with our longtime sidekick, Lefty, and our 2-year-old daughter, Bo.” The family is moving from the cottage—they close this week—but Maine has them hooked: “We’re on the hunt for a home in the Midcoast to root and raise Bo,” they report.
Here, Alison takes us on a farewell tour of the cottage. (Scroll down for a look at the interiors before, too, which she succinctly describes as “a lot of knotty pine and shellac”.)
Photography by Jay Carroll.
After
Before
N.B.: You can do some Zillow sleuthing on the cottage right over here.
And for more by Alison and Jay, see A California Creative Couple’s Desert-Modern Hotel in Santa Fe.
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