Last summer, Jackie Kelly-Pemberton and her husband, Steven, checked off the last project—if that exists—on their cottage reno to-do list: the outhouse. Since purchasing their off-grid cabin in Ontario’s Central Frontenac area in 2015, they had been using the original pit privy. After nearly a decade, Jackie knew how she wanted to upgrade it.
“Glampy” was her goal. “It’s the outdoor experience with a bit of glamour,” she says, and it had been the guiding principle for her entire cottage redesign. To achieve the glampy look in the roughly 8-by-8-foot outhouse, Jackie spent a year sourcing repurposed decorations, the first of which was a collection of old fishing lures (now displayed inside a spoon rack).
“I was going through my father-in-law’s fish tackle after his passing, and I thought, What do I do with three boxes of lures?” says Jackie. She later had the same thought about her late mother’s spoon rack. Then, given her father-in-law’s love for fishing, her passion for giving old things new life, and insp- ired by her ocean-themed bathroom at home, the answer was clear as day: “The bits and pieces coming together sent me towards a freshwater fish theme.”
Check out the beer can wallpaper in this one-of-a-kind outhouse
She won the cast iron, fish-shaped plate displayed in the outhouse entryway in an online auction; the silver fish beside it is actually a napkin holder. Steven found the ice fishing rod above the window in an antique shop, and the wooden lures hanging from it came from various vintage stores. The final touch was the privy seat, framed with a collage of fishing mag- azine clippings. “I spent rainy days last summer on the cottage porch with my Mod Podge,” says Jackie. “A friend helped me seal it with epoxy resin.”
The finished building has a shower powered with a reservoir and a small pump, plus a gravity-fed sink. While it’s everything Jackie needs, she knows her glampy cottage lifestyle isn’t for everyone. “I have friends who say, ‘I don’t want to stay the night at your cottage because you have an outhouse.’ To them, I say, ‘You haven’t seen it yet.’ ”
This article was originally published in the August 2025 issue of Cottage Life magazine.
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