Stegesund, Vaxholm, Sweden
Let's start off January with a visit to a cleanly-swept villa on a windswept Swedish island. In the Baltic Sea there are 64 little islands that comprise the Stockholm archipelago known as Vaxholm. Stegesund is one of them, and it's known for its stately summer houses -- but you can access them all year round, the listing assures us.
Like most European real estate listings, this one has scant details and lets the pictures do all the selling.
This sun-drenched villa hooked me with the first picture of its cute little boathouse. The main house looks equally fresh and inviting.
It's so clean and spare that I'm hesitant to suggest any furniture for it, but this little foyer would be a sweet mini-greenhouse space, like this one:
It reflects the yard, while the dining nook reflects the sea.
Google Translate was a bit befuddled by the messages painted over the kitchen door and windows -- as best as I can tell it's some dietary saying, like "eat, drink, and be merry."
If it were mine, the lovely bare room above would become a barely-there sitting room, like this one:
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Like I said, the details on the house are few, but the listing noted that there are five bedrooms (while showing us one of them).
The boathouse, on the other hand, gives us a few more ideas of what it has to offer...
which gives me plenty of ideas for a clean-swept, simple and beautiful year-round retreat:
The listing is here.
