{"id":135626,"date":"2025-10-21T08:18:18","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T08:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/135626\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T08:18:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T08:18:18","slug":"gesa-hansens-french-cottage-renovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/135626\/","title":{"rendered":"Gesa Hansen\u2019s French cottage renovation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen I tell people where I live, they say, \u2018You are one of the happy few,\u2019\u201d says the German-Danish France-based designer and interior architect Gesa Hansen, as we drive along the small riverside road that leads to her home town of Samois-sur-Seine. For more than a century, this tiny commune, an impossibly postcard-pretty village surrounded by the Fontainebleau forest, has been an escape for wealthy Parisians who summer in their belle \u00e9poque, half-timbered villas \u2014 known as Les Affolantes \u2014 set on the banks of the River Seine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, many creative types, like Hansen\u2019s close-knit community of forty-something former Parisians, have made it their permanent home \u2014 it is only a 40-minute train ride away from the Gare de Lyon in eastern Paris.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hansen moved here in 2024, but had been living in the region, in the neighbouring town of Courances, since 2017 with her former husband, the French restaurateur Charles Compagnon. She had often visited her current neighbours and close friends, the interior designer C\u00e9line Poulfort and her husband Zach Miskin, who had bought one of Samois-sur-Seine\u2019s emblematic villas in 2020. Behind their home was a two-storey cottage Hansen had often admired, with its own walled garden.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AThe \u2018technical, masculine\u2019 Jean Nouvel for Reform stainless steel kitchen, with contrasting deep olive green paint and the original tomette terracotta floors \"AHansen loves the enormous 3-metre-high, Bauhaus-inspired paned window in her bedroom <\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever I passed by, I was struck by its large atelier windows, reminiscent of the Bauhaus,\u201d says Hansen. She had studied at the Bauhaus school before working for the architect Jean Nouvel and eventually starting her own practice, growing it alongside the handcrafted furniture line, The Hansen Family, that she runs with her brother and parents. \u201cOne day, I gathered the courage to knock on the door. At the time, the former owner, a painter in her seventies, wasn\u2019t ready to sell, but I told her, \u201cIf you ever decide to part with this house, I would love to buy it.\u201d Eventually, that day came.<\/p>\n

Hansen arrived with her three children and her Nova Scotia retriever in winter last year, newly divorced and eager for a fresh start. In just three months, she transformed the 1910 house, maximising the modest 100-square-metre floor plan by adapting it from two bedrooms and one bathroom to four bedrooms and two bathrooms. The house faces north, so in the downstairs living room she kept the palette light, painting the walls and ceiling in Farrow & Ball\u2019s Slipper Satin, a pale grey chalk, and adding touches of colour \u2014 a mustard velvet sofa and curtains and a cosy banquette upholstered in a Pierre Frey botanical print fabric. A La Castellamonte wood-burning stove in the corner is used five months of the year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"MarbleThe house faces north, so Hansen was careful to use a light palette for the walls \"BrightThe pitched roof lends itself to interesting layout quirks, such as an abundance of built-in cupboards and shelves <\/p>\n

Through a large arch-shaped opening sits the kitchen, a striking room she painted in deep olive green that offsets the earthy tones of the original tomette terracotta floors. She fitted the space with a Jean Nouvel for Reform stainless steel kitchen, marble benchtops and a Villeroy & Boch sink with a brass tap. \u201cI\u2019ve always loved mixing metals,\u201d she says, adding: \u201cI wanted a very technical, masculine kitchen because I think after the break-up, I was afraid to create a female clich\u00e9 home.\u201d<\/p>\n

We head outside to the garden, a small, square-shaped haven with a patch of lawn and a gravel pathway bordered by beds of gaura, salvia and grasses such as Stipa tenuissima and Pennisetum alopecuroides, as well as juneberry and smoke bush that add colour and texture in autumn. Evergreen topiaries keep the garden lively in winter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"SunlitA bathroom\u2019s wood-panelled walls and floorboards have been repainted white in a nod to Hansen\u2019s Scandinavian roots \"AHansen\u2019s two girls share a room to which a mezzanine has been added, painted a soft, calming powdery pink <\/p>\n

\u201cGesa\u2019s brief was clear: she wanted it to feel wuschelig \u2014 which means wild, soft and a little bit tousled,\u201d says her landscape gardener Estelle Marandon, another close friend from the region. \u201cWith a small house, the garden becomes even more essential \u2014 it\u2019s almost like an extra room. We wanted it to feel like a little cocoon, a place where she could wrap herself up and simply feel good.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is Hansen\u2019s favourite spot for her morning coffee; it also provides the best view of the home\u2019s charming architecture: the stonework of its facade, the pitched, gabled roof, and the enormous 3-metre-high paned window in Hansen\u2019s bedroom upstairs.<\/p>\n

\"AA nook for a bed in her son\u2019s room \"AIn Hansen\u2019s room, a niche for her desk <\/p>\n

The roof on the second floor reaches 4 metres in some parts, which allowed Hansen to add a mezzanine in one of the rooms so her girls could share the space. She painted the room a soft, calming powdery pink: \u201cI will have two girls in puberty, so I thought that was a good choice,\u201d she laughs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pitched roof lends itself to interesting layout quirks: plenty of built-in cupboards and shelves, a nook for a bed in her son\u2019s room, and a niche for her desk in her own spacious room. The clever use of space, combined with an abundance of wood-panelled walls and floorboards \u2014 all original but repainted white in a nod to her Scandinavian roots \u2014 gives the home a nautical feel. A reminder of the nearby river.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A\u2018With a small house, the garden becomes even more essential \u2014 it\u2019s almost like an extra room. We wanted it to feel like a little cocoon,\u2019 says landscape gardener Estelle Marandon <\/p>\n

Summers in Samois-sur-Seine are spent kayaking and swimming. \u201cIt\u2019s not like swimming in the Seine in Paris,\u201d Hansen says with a grin about the hotly debated topic<\/a>. A keen sportswoman, she is currently training for her skippers\u2019 licence, and she also plays polo at the local club, and rock climbs most weekends in the forest. \u201cSometimes it\u2019s like being on holiday here,\u201d she says, pulling a banana bread out of the oven and walking next door to Poulfort and Miskin\u2019s home, where she and her children spend much of their time.<\/p>\n

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As the four of us enjoy the cake \u2014 fragrant and so hot it crumbles \u2014 in the late afternoon sun, Miskin wonders if it\u2019s too soon for a glass of wine. Garden aperitifs between neighbours, bouncing from one house to the other, are a regular feature, and their stressed-out Parisian friends often stop by on weekends. \u201cWe had friends who stayed for a weekend \u2014 by Sunday evening, they had made an offer on the place two houses down,\u201d says Miskin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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