FEATURED HOME: STORYBOOK CABIN
The adage “good things come in small packages” resonates with JLF Architects’ attention to detail in creating guesthouses like the charming Jackson Hole storybook cabin recently featured in American Farmhouse Style magazine. While diminutive at 1,000 square feet, the maximum allowed for a Jackson Hole guesthouse, the auxiliary building received the same level of care and technique – and the same powerhouse design-build team – showered on the main house, an expansive JLF-designed new build created in collaboration with Big-D Signature and WRJ Design and previously featured in Traditional Home magazine. The resulting “beautiful guesthouse,” as American Farmhouse Style writes, “reflects a unique marriage of modern and traditional,”.
The guesthouse’s appeal has ties to Instagram’s popular “cottagecore” trend, a concept that “taps into the collective modern fantasy of running away to a cabin in the woods or a cottage in a meadow,” as The Spruce recently wrote. This mini-home, though just steps from the main house, captures that allure, its careful siting creating the sense of a private escape into a simpler time and place. Yet while the tiny-house charm of the little structure is undeniable, for Rocky Mountain homeowners the cozy guesthouse concept is also a practical consideration for hosting family and friends – or even finding a space apart from the main house for a home office, yoga studio, or just a separate place to relax. American Farmhouse Style recognized that aspect when they featured this Wyoming guest cabin as “Overflowing with Purpose” in the fall 2024 issue, highlighting its multifunction nature.
“The concept for this guesthouse, detached but close to the main house, was as a dual-purpose space that would work as an office for the owner on the main level and overflow space for guests and grandchildren in the form of a bunk room on the lower level with a small game room and bathroom,” says JLF Architects principal Logan Leachman. And interiors by Jackson Hole-based WRJ Design contribute to helping the multiple functions amicably coexist in the small building. Asked by the homeowners to incorporate some sentimental furnishings and heirloom pieces from their previous home, the WRJ team “helped them select and edit the collection of furniture and objects to create a beautiful environment,” CEO and design director Rush Jenkins tells the magazine, applying his firm’s remarkable attention to detail to achieve the same “significance and harmony” as for any of their projects. “Despite the smaller scale here those qualities also inform this little cabin,” he says.
Similarly, the regionalism, site-based approach, and trademark materials – including reclaimed timber and locally sourced stone – that JLF Architects is known for were also translated to the smaller scale, as were rustic-meets-modern architectural elements used for the main house. “The challenge is making sure that the scale is appropriate for the smaller structure,” Leachman tells the magazine of designing a guest cabin that stands on its own as an appealing, cohesive design, while correctly relating to its much-larger neighbor. “Timber sizes and material spacing that look appropriate on the house may need to be adjusted on the smaller guesthouse,” he says. In the end, the design-build team found that small-but-mighty sweet spot for the rustic guesthouse that, as the magazine puts it, “hits the mark.”
