The floating shelves were built with recycled bowling-alley wood and painted bright red, a look the couple loved. They made a virtue out of the tight budget, conjuring a space that looks, delightfully, like a retro diner. For the record, she has also assembled a windmill ceiling fan and a table saw.īut the couple called in the pros when necessary - as in the kitchen, where demolition, plumbing and rewiring were involved. She refreshed a love seat in similar fashion, in that case with a burgundy floral pattern and a checkered dust ruffle.
Gilbert took a chance on some burgundy slipcovers that she found online and then added other fabrics and cushions to create a whole new piece of furniture. Just one example (or maybe two): After a protracted search, the couple found a sofa that was perfect in every way except color (an unfortunate shade of asphalt gray), so Ms. “She’ll have a hammer hanging out of one of those pockets in half an hour.” Busfield said with an affectionate look at his wife. A can-do spirit was - and is - the currency. The couple closed on the property in January of 2019, dubbed it “the cabbage,” an amalgam of “cabin” and “cottage,” and began mapping out plans for renovation and design. Gilbert writes in “Back to the Prairie.” “I just had to look past the crap.” “As I stared up at one of the rotting deer heads on the wall, a lifetime of therapy kicked in and I thought I could do something here,” Ms. And the 14 bosky acres that came with the ramshackle house were ravishing. The living room had pine paneling and a fireplace. The loft would prove to be an ideal music room. The dropped ceiling in the kitchen hid a cathedral ceiling. But despite the mice and the mold and the mildew (and that awful smell), there was potential.
What the couple found in their price range - a small structure with halfhearted half-timbering, peeling stucco and an interior crammed with the detritus of the previous owner - wasn’t pretty. Gilbert writes in her new memoir, “Back to the Prairie: A Home Remade, A Life Rediscovered,” “It became important for us to have a place where we could escape.”Ī Zillow search led them to Highland Lake, N.Y., a dot on the map in Sullivan County. Busfield, in particular, felt a lack in the fresh-air department. Gainful employment was all well and good, but Mr.
Busfield, now 64, who is also a director, found work on TV shows like “Law & Order: SVU.” Gilbert, now 58, was quickly cast in “The Dead, 1904,” an immersive theater adaptation of the James Joyce novella. Busfield, who is best known for his role on “The West Wing” and his Emmy-winning turn on “Thirtysomething,” relocated to Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
Gilbert, who became a household name at the age of 10 as a star of the long-running series “Little House on the Prairie,” and Mr. The experience was a tonic, for sure, but a five-year dose was sufficient. Almost immediately after Melissa Gilbert and Tim Busfield married in 2013 - the third time for both of them - they swapped the glitter and hustle of Los Angeles for the low-key charms of small-town life in Mr.