Elegant Key West Tree House

The Elegant Key West Tree House is a unique monthly rental to stay anytime of the year. Discretely built back off the street to quietly overlook an historic tropical garden, this Boho luxe Key West rental encompasses the entire 2nd floor of a beautifully renovated 1930’s building. Perched among mature tropical trees, the 1200 square foot 2nd floor flat is situated on a quiet road in the exclusive Old Town Casa Marina neighborhood. With a wide wooden covered porch spanning the front of the house, every room still has the original casement windows providing a fabulous look-down view of different garden scenes that change throughout the subtle seasonal changes of the tropics.

The owner’s affections permeate the flat’s elegant soft style inside and out. It recaptures a “bohemian and chic” .

Entrance for this property is through a pretty arbor gate, down a path that gently winds through the garden, and then up a private wooden switch-back staircase towards the back corner of the building. Since it’s nestled into the trees on the 2nd floor, the entrance is very private from the ground below.

Interior Layout: With wide open archways, tall ceilings, and shiny hard wood floors that flow from room-to-room, the home feels very spacious, yet like a reassuring cocoon all at the same time. The first thing you notice when you step inside is the Brazilian tiger wood floor spanning the entire length of the open concept ‘great-room’ which encompasses about 2/3 of the flat. An eclectic mix of furniture styles, art mix effortlessly to create an interesting and refreshing décor throughout the home.

The front door to the flat leads directly into the living room, where a Tommy Bahama sofa and comfy green velvet loveseat and rattan chair make it easy to plunk down as soon as you’re inside. Antique side tables and unique lamps, a Queen Anne style hinged coffee table, and an arched dark walnut entertainment center complete the living room furnishings. Just past the velvet loveseat, you enter the dining room ‘zone.’

A traditional Queen Anne style cherry-wood dining set placed in the middle of the wood floor, a matching ‘highboy dresser’ standing to the side, and simple crystal chandelier clearly define the elegant dining area. A beautiful historic feature of the dining area is a twinset of original corner break-front cabinets that grace the interior wall on either side of an archway, near the hall that leads to the two bedrooms and bathroom.

A-second-tall archway defines the next ‘zone’ in the great-room, the fully equipped large ‘U-Shape’ kitchen. On the exterior walls, the original solid wooden cabinets that reach to the tall ceiling were kept in place but sanded and refinished in yacht fashion. On the interior wall, a spacious pantry was built next to the double door refrigerator. On the front exterior wall, a beautiful custom ‘European-style’ laundry center was custom designed, complete with a Bosch washer/dryer and black granite counter-top. A small kitchen island, on rollers, rests in the center of the kitchen.

A single French door on the front wall, leads from the kitchen to one of the nicest features of this property – the wide covered front dining porch with a beautiful view of the front garden. The porch is set with a wooden teak dining table, chairs, plus matching teak chaise lounge providing an ideal place for breakfast, coffee, or an evening glass of wine. Many guests tend to spend a lot of their vacation right here on this heavenly porch.

Back inside, towards the middle of the great room through a wide archway, we find the hall leading to the bedrooms and the fully renovated vintage style bathroom. Facing the hall, the master bedroom is on the left side, the office / guest bedroom is on the right, and the full bathroom is in the middle. The alluring master bedroom has a sense of romance and opulence with two beautiful dark wood dressers, and a tall 4-poster king-size bed set against soft yellow walls. A door connects directly from the master bedroom into the bathroom; the bathroom is also accessed from a doorway off the hall.

In the elegant bathroom, the original bathtub, tucked beneath its own tall arch, was kept in place but trimmed with a chic faux marble tile that is repeated on the bathroom floor and again in the free-standing shower. The separate shower stall is fit with a custom frameless glass door.

The spacious 2nd bedroom is set up with versatility in mind. A desk and a bookshelf offer an ideal home office, while a queen size bed and antique armoire provide an inviting bedroom. Incongruous design solutions are a specialty for the owner, and the fun color theme for this room is ‘linen and blue jeans.’ Faux painted walls really do look like blue jeans and with the linen headboard and lamp shades create a feeling of bohemian luxury. A trunk imported from India, and French script fabric chairs, add more unconventional notes.

Garden: This flat is situated on the south side of Old Town Key West, in a mature tropical tree garden, called ‘Molly Parker’s Garden’ that was originally created in the late 1930’s by Ms. Molly Parker. While this property is only a slice of the original garden, it originally spanned an entire block and was ‘out in the country’ on Key West. There are still a few local Key West “Conchs” (residents) alive who remember Ms. Molly Parker from their childhood and talk about her as the “Johnny Appleseed” of Key West as she was credited for planting most of the old Grandfather Mahogany trees and tropical fruit trees on the island.

Today the large historic property is filled with tall giant white birds of paradise, a variety of palm trees, a plethora of thatch palms, native hardwood trees, a starburst tree, giant mahogany trees, black bamboo, a variety of tropical understory plants.