An inspiring view and a beloved but dated family retreat were the predicate for this Downeast Maine residential renovation. Now nearing completion, the project makes extensive use of the original buildings—a three-bedroom main house and a small guest cottage—while thoroughly modernizing their functional and aesthetic qualities.
The main house’s single-level floor plan, with its open kitchen, dining, and living space, remains essentially unchanged. While we replaced all of the bathroom fixtures and finishes, we retained the existing kitchen also much as we found it.
Interior rendering
The key interventions consisted of reframing the exterior walls for new windows and sliding glass doors and replacing the existing low-pitched gable roof with an entirely new shed roof structure. Clad in horizontal cedar siding, the resulting exterior suggests a solid, sculpted form rather than an assembly of separate components. Exposed Douglas fir trusses and a tongue-and-groove pine ceiling echo elements of the original interior.
We reconfigured the original two-bedroom guest cottage, long ago dubbed the “Motel,” as a single-bedroom living unit. With its own new shed roof, and also clad in horizontal cedar boards, the smaller building has a mother-and-child relationship with the main house, an effect reinforced by the cedar-skirted deck that connects the two buildings.
To passersby along the shore road that fronts the property, the impression is that of an entirely new residence carefully woven into its rugged site. The owners enjoy the same effect—plus all of the things they loved about their family’s old summer place.
