Turning a Balaton Hilltop Cottage into a Year-Round Retreat

The brief is simple. Build a house where ten people can spend a long weekend without drifting off into separate screens. So no TV and no console. Instead: books, board games, a fireplace, a wine cellar, a sauna, and a garden big enough that the kids vanish for an hour while the adults stay at the table.

Up to ten people should sleep comfortably across three bedrooms: two proper adult rooms (a master with the Balaton panorama, plus a guest room) and a kids’ room with built-in bunks that adults can use too. The outside matters as much as the inside. That means a big terrace with an outdoor kitchen, a fire pit, play zones, and a wellness corner in natural wood with a sauna, hot tub and ice bath.

It should be good for kids without looking like it was designed by a toy catalogue.

The bones are good. It’s a traditional Hungarian “présház” (press house) with thick walls, a thatched roof, and a beautiful vaulted brick wine cellar underneath. Downstairs there’s a living room with a green tile stove, a small kitchen and a storage room. Upstairs, three rooms under exposed wooden beams, currently a master bedroom, a guest room and a kids’ room. Outside: a covered terrace, a stone pergola, and a large garden with mature trees and a vineyard.

It’s still a summer house, though, and it shows. There’s no proper electricity for heating. The kitchen is closed off and dark. The rooms upstairs are beautiful but basic, and the master bedroom has a small window exactly where a floor-to-ceiling panorama should be. The wine cellar is used for storage instead of being shown off. And the outdoor space, easily the biggest asset we have, has nothing set up for cooking, playing or lounging around.

Most of the structural work happens downstairs. Two new openings in the wall (a larger window and a pass-through) connect the kitchen to the living room, and both of them to the outside. The kitchen gets a complete renovation and turns around to face the terrace and garden. If you’re cooking, you should be looking at trees and sky, not at a wall.

The green tile stove stays. It’s the heart of the house. A built-in bench wraps around it and keeps going, tying the entry, kitchen and living area into one room where people actually gather. The dining table seats 8–10. Two armchairs in the corner make a quieter reading nook, and bookshelves line the walls.

That one room has a lot of moods to cover: loud dinner parties, quiet morning coffee, kids sprawled on the floor over board games. A showcase fireplace adds some drama and more warmth. The lighting is indirect, layered and cottage-warm. No harsh overheads.

Under the house is a vaulted brick cellar that currently stores odds and ends. It deserves better. It’s becoming a proper showcase wine cellar, with ambient lighting, real storage, and enough atmosphere that you want to grab a bottle and open it upstairs immediately.

The vault already looks stunning. It just needs light and furniture: warm LEDs hidden in the curves of the vault, a small tasting area, and the same indirect lighting as the rest of the house. Walking down there should feel like you’ve found something.

The master bedroom gets the most dramatic change. The wall facing Balaton gets cut open for a floor-to-ceiling window, so you wake up and see the lake from your bed. It’s also the quiet workspace: a floating desk in the corner, a reading chair, good light. It’s the only room in the house where you might open a laptop, and even then not for long.

The guest bedroom gets tongue-and-groove panelling painted sage green, a rattan headboard, linen bedding, and enough character to feel like its own little world.

The kids’ room is where we get to play. Six built-in beds in a creative bunk arrangement, somewhere between a sleeper train and a treehouse. Every bunk gets its own reading light, a small shelf and a privacy curtain, with storage drawers underneath. It sleeps six kids or, at a push, adults who don’t mind an adventure. The rest of the room stays open floor for books, toys and floor cushions.

Some walls around the house get writable or paintable finishes, so kids (and adults) can draw, leave messages, and make the place their own. Nobody should have to tiptoe around this house.

The terrace and garden are where this place really comes alive. The covered terrace runs into an outdoor kitchen with a built-in grill, maybe a pizza oven, and bar-height seating, so one person can cook while everyone else hangs around with a drink. A long outdoor table seats the whole group.

The garden splits into zones: a fire pit with L-shaped benches for the evenings, a kids’ play area built from natural wood, and seating platforms around the existing trees. Then hammocks, hanging chairs, and string lights over the lot.

Off to one side of the garden goes the wellness area: a small wooden sauna cabin, a wood-fired barrel hot tub, an outdoor shower and an ice bath, all on a wooden deck and all built from natural materials. Wood and stone, nothing that looks factory-made or out of place. The kids will treat the hot tub as a pool, the adults will climb in after the sauna, and everyone’s happy.