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Summer Whites

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One of Charleston’s vanguard couples trades downtown digs for light and easy island life

Photographs by
Brie Williams
Guest rooms in the bunkhouse are as simply dressed as the rest of the abode. Shiplap walls (boards with overlapping joints) offer a clean backdrop for colorful artwork, like this piece entitled Single Bed by Charleston artist Jeff Kopish.
The bedrooms in the back bunkhouse—additional sleeping quarters that Judy and Fred built and bridged to the main house—open to a screened porch overlooking the backyard.
A clawfoot tub in the bunkhouse stands ready for sandy grandchildren.
An old wool Jantzen bathing suit recalls beach days past.
A collection of potted herbs lines the steps leading up to the back porch, where an open-air breezeway connects main house to bunkhouse.
Sliding “barn” doors designed and crafted by Fred separate bed and bath in the bunkhouse.
A mid-19th century tilt-top table found at an antiques show in Cleveland doubles as a low-seated bench in the foyer.
Pops of red repeat throughout the cottage; on the back porch, windows offering a peek into the kitchen are trimmed in cherry red.
The well-worn sea-green hue on the porch ceiling was handed down with the house and reflects the laid-back, laissez-faire lifestyle that drew the Reinhards to the island.
Fred’s prized collection of found beach toys are displayed in a clear glass lamp base.
Summer Whites
The long, open kitchen is punctuated by a red Texaco sign they found in a shop in Atlanta. “We use it as a night light,” Judy laughs.
Unpainted oak rocking chairs and a tall pencil cactus flank the shuttered, screen-door entrance to the Reinhard beach house.
A familiar remnant of the couple’s bygone shop on King Street hangs on a white wall in the front room, where slipcovered sofas keep things clean and comfortable. The cone-shaped floor lamp—playfully dubbed the “Dr. Seuss lamp”—is fashioned from a half-dozen lampshades designed to fit inside one another.
Vintage bells collected in Turkey, Greece, and Beirut—Fred’s commission in the Air Force transplanted the couple overseas in the 1970s—are suspended over the back of a sofa