You might say local entrepreneur and lover of antiques, art and design Jill Barrett collects houses with stories. As owner of several vacation rentals — a few that she, her husband Josh and daughter Lila have lived in themselves — Barrett’s passion is finding a hidden gem and transforming it into a space for modern-day living, while honoring its colorful past.
“My mom and dad were always into creating atmosphere in a home,” Barrett said. “I always have believed and learned from my parents that a home and a house will tell you what it wants to be. You have to kind of be in it and let it speak to you.”
So, when she read in “More Historic Homes of Waco, Texas” by Kenneth Hafertepe that her bungalow cottage on Washington Avenue was the setting of a 1920s jewelry heist, just imagine the intrigue.
“According to his research, there was a robbery here and a woman and her sister were drugged, basically chloroformed, and passed out,” Barrett said. “The equivalent of $90,000 in today’s money worth of diamonds was stolen from them here. So, I have been looking under the floorboards as much as I could and all the possible hiding spots as to where this collection of diamonds might have been.”
It’s stories like that that get Barrett’s imagination and her creative juices flowing as she works to renovate, restore and furnish the homes that win her heart.
“For me, it’s about creating a storied collection within that home that sort of makes it shine,” she said. “That’s usually an eclectic mix of style. I like to mix it all together. I love bringing modern art in with 18th century French buffets. So, I would say the style of this house is a very eclectic, mixed of gathered things that I’ve found personally or for my antique business — and also things that just worked for us as a family.”
The Barretts own Falcon + Owl, an antique and home interior shop located in downtown Waco. They purchased “The English Writer’s Cottage,” as she affectionately named it, in 2016.
“The beginning of this home happened for me when I noticed it, living in the neighborhood and driving by,” Barrett said. “I always loved it. It reminded me sort of something I would have seen in Santa Barbara. And being from Arizona, the stucco and the architecture of this home spoke to me. And then one day we saw a ‘for sale by owner’ sign, and we jumped on it.”
The couple knew renovations were in order — but that excited Barrett even more.
“It was the right price and right time for us, and it was a home that we could put our hands on and let it tell us its story and what it wanted to be,” Barrett said. “That’s how we ended up with the name ‘English Writer’s Cottage.’ We kind of name all of our houses. Sometimes they become vacation rentals. Sometimes they are the home we think we’re going to live in for forever. But this is one of those homes for us that we really do want to live here and be here. And we consider this our home.”
While the Barretts don’t currently live in the cottage, they plan to move back someday soon.
“We should be living there now, but we’re actually renovating another one a block away,” Barrett said. “We’re staying there while we renovate it. It’s one of those labor of love, heartbeat projects.”
As for how the home got its name, Barrett said there was a book in her childhood home called “Writer’s Houses.”
“It was this eclectic mix of these homes that famous writers had owned and they all sort of felt like this. Kind of a little imperfect. Kind of gathered. Hemingway had a house, and I think it was Key West, that felt like this house to me. We used to have a cat that showed up here, and we called him ‘Caticus Finch.’ He is memorialized with a little cat statue outside, but he is no longer with us.”
Stepping in through the front door, there’s much to take in right away — from the 12-foot coffered ceilings to the cozy, comfortable aesthetic to the splash of modern art that all seem to work together.
“I like to bring elements of comfort, elements of interest,” Barrett said. “So, the objects that are in this house are things that I loved and I collected, and it created this eclectic mix, and they truly are from everywhere.”
One thing that cannot go unnoticed is the vintage artwork of Peter Keil, a German expressionist for whom Barrett is his primary Texas dealer.
“I love all the faces and all the personalities that they have,” Barrett said. “They also have their own stories. And as I spent more time with the art, naturally it shows up in my spaces. I think it’s super interesting and it’s eclectic and fun and really has lots of vibrant colors. There’s a certain patina to the ones I’m mostly drawn to that have a vintage appeal.”
Barrett hosts a gallery space at Falcon + Owl that recently showcased an exhibition of Keil’s art.
“I always want to bring pieces in that inspire the imagination, that make you feel like you’ve traveled somewhere, that bring you to that place, and you wonder, ‘Where was this?’ and ‘Where did they get that?’”
The wood floors and the beams are original to the house, instantly giving the family rooms a feeling of days gone by. Though it is one space, Barrett says there are definitely two separate areas of the family room.
“Within the family room, we have what I like to call a keeping room or the library,” she said.
“This is honestly where I always called this sitting room type of room in a house — the keeping room. That’s what I grew up knowing them as. It’s also sort of our library room. But this is where we come when we have guests over. We sit in here, we talk and we gather here a lot.”
The centerpiece of the keeping room has to be a vintage oval-shaped mirrored coffee table that Barrett found in someone’s yard.
“I needed a coffee table for here and I wasn’t sure how I was going to pull all this together, but I really liked the idea of these chairs around a table in a sitting area. We’re driving to my little nephew’s christening, and this table is sitting out on the curb at someone’s house. We were all dressed up, and I said, ‘Josh, pull over.’ He’s like, ‘Jill, we are literally’ — I mean he was wearing a suit. It was hot. It was summer. So, we literally were in our Sunday’s best, and we pull over and they told me it was free. We stuffed this thing into our car, and I don’t know, to this day, how it actually fit in that car, but it did.”
The other side of the family room is more of a place for watching TV and hanging out casually.
When Barrett speaks of acquiring furnishings for her home, she never uses the word “buy.” She prefers “gather” or “collect” for how special items find their way to her — even though she’s paying for them.
For instance, the chandeliers in the family room and dining room, she said, were gathered from her favorite French antique dealer in Round Top.
“They remind me of a French parlor or hotel chandelier,” she said. “The one above the dining table I think is really interesting — [it’s like] lily pads. These are probably replicas, to be honest. But they are replicated off of a vintage chandelier, definitely.”
Barrett, who seems to float through her home on a cloud, came to a full stop when she reached a gilded gold mirror hanging in the dining room.
“This mirror is probably maybe my favorite piece in this house,” she said. “It is a Swedish mirror. When I first got it, I would have thought that it was Italian, but the curvature on the top of it is just amazing. I’ve never seen one like that. The way that the light catches the stars and all the hand carving. It’s a super unique shape on this mirror. It’s got a lot of story to tell.”
The home has three bedrooms — each with its own aesthetic. The first one, just off the dining room, was once the home’s small kitchen, evidenced by the Dutch door leading to the outside garden. An antique iron bed with soft white linens is flanked by two hand-painted Italian iron garden lamps.
“I think these are my favorite lamps for lighting in this house,” Barrett said. “They are wonderful in here. Just the details, like this old iron bed. I love the etching on it. You can see where it probably had, like, a pearl inlay on it. I collected this and saved it for the right house and here it is.”
A former butler’s pantry is now the accompanying guest bathroom to this bedroom and features botanical lily pads that are a nod to the nearby chandelier.
The kitchen — which was once an atrium that the home centered around — is the heartbeat of the home.
“This is where we gather and live life,” Barrett said. “Everything happens here. When Lila first learned how to ride a scooter, that happened here. Roller skates happened here in the kitchen.
I love that I had the opportunity in such a kind of smaller bungalow-style cottage home that we could do this huge kitchen and really entertain here.”
Like everything here, this cottage “lives big, even though it’s small,” Barrett added.
A custom-made metal shelf hangs over a large 10-foot island topped in white quartz. The kitchen counters are a contrasting galaxy black granite. The original atrium skylights were restored and allow tons of light to illuminate the kitchen.
Lila’s room, which is situated just off the kitchen, is nothing short of fanciful with its green-painted European shutters, gold crown canopy and Nathalie Lete wallpaper by Anthropologie.
“I loved this wallpaper, and I was only going to do one wall,” Barrett said, “and then when I got it in here, I was like, ‘I have to have every wall.’ It is a piece of art. Every time I come in here, I can sit and look at these flowers all day. And I thought it was really sweet for a little girl’s room.”
A modernized Jack-and-Jill bathroom connects Lila’s room with the primary bedroom, which is adorned with an ornate Indian wedding headboard on the bed.
“When a couple would get married, they would be given their headboard and I have always wanted to bring it into our house,” Barrett said. “And, of course, my Peter Keil art has to show up in this room. Some of Peter’s art is heavy, but these are really whimsical to me. It’s like the man and the woman are looking at each other, and I think it’s fun.
The room once had a fireplace in the corner, but when renovating the house, they decided to trade it for more wall space.
“It was so charming, but with the fireplace in here, we did not have one wall that was good to put a dresser on or any storage,” Barrett said. “And these old houses don’t have big closets.”
The highlight of the primary bedroom is another of Barrett’s all-time favorite pieces — an 18th century salmon pink and gilded gold Italian jewelry cabinet.
“Every drawer has this fringe and pink silk material in it,” she said. “And these were the jewelry drawers. They would take a jewelry drawer out and pull it down and probably sit there with a mirror while getting dressed. This piece is very special.”
Barrett said she wants the piece to stay in the family.
“That’s how I buy things that I love and have a connection with,” she said. “And if I’m selling it, I just hope that the right person’s going to come along and have that same kind of connection, and that’s what I usually buy. There have been pieces that I really loved and kind of wanted to keep, but if the right person connects with that piece, I have to let it go to them. It’s theirs.”
That’s Barrett’s philosophy, whether it’s the home where she’s living or where she’s hosting guests from anywhere in the world.
“One person who stayed here wrote us a letter and said, ‘Every moment in this home tells a story,’” Barrett said. “And that was the best compliment I could ever get.”
