Features

A potting shed, which Carlton helped build. The sun-dappled plants in the foreground are mayapples. Behind, one can see Jack-in-the-pupits, day lilies, and a bottlebrush bush.

Joan's garden tools sit on a slab of bluestone atop crushed rock.

Joan standing outside her home's solarium and watering what she calls "Kevin's garden," because her psychologist-son Kevin brought the stones for the garden and helped establish the paintings. The pink plant in the foreground is liatris.

A view of the garden with its many walls (opposite). Rhododendrons, azaleas, andromedas, and evergreens are in the background. An astilbe garden with day lilies is in the foreground. The pots on the stone walls have mixed flowers. A sargent crabapple on the right attracts birds who love its red berries.

More of Joan's gardening tools.

Joan Plummer standing on the bridge between her home and the main entrance of the Plummer Gallery, where she, her husband, and their son Gerry show their paintings and sculpture. Carlton is at work on a landscape in the garden below.

Joan and Carlton sitting on a step in one of their lower gardens. An oriental lily and liatris are in the left corner, and a rose garden is just out of sight to the right.

Carlton and Joan Plummer on the porch of their East Boothbay home, looking out toward Rutherford Island. Monhegan is the faint island in the distance on the right.

Carlton picking raspberries. Some of the 14 quarts he picked last summer were put up for jam.

Carlton picking raspberries. Some of the 14 quarts he picked last summer were put up for jam.

Carlton standing in the man-made dry riverbed that runs through the property. The purple flower in the foreground is astilbe. The yellow flower at the right is coreopsis. A rhododendron - one of 50 on the property - is in the background.

The Plummers' youngest son, Gerry, made this sculpture - which he calls Despondent - out of Maine granite.

A bluestone path leads into the woods. The stone at the right is the first step in a staircase that goes between the wall in the foreground and the wall in the background. Carlton built all of these freestanding stone walls - some of which are six feet high - with rock that came out of the property. The tree on the left is an andromeda.

Homeowner Emily Magal (with dog Fred) outside the 1800s Peaks Island home she and her husband, architect Jim Greenwell, renovated with Bill Bunton and his team. The front doors were painted in a glossy orange boat epoxy. Magal and Greenwell invited passersby to vote on color options for the doors by posting paint swatches to the side of the house during renovation.

A galley-style kitchen with curved ceiling is evocative of a boat. One of the most dramatic parts of the renovation involved demolishing a series of rooms and walls that blocked this view from the front door. Now, the kitchen is open from front to back, where a banquette with Angela Adams fabric and Eero Saarinen chairs and tables overlooks the water. The kitchen features cabinetry by Indisco, marble by Blue Rock Industries, and fixtures by Redlon and Johnson. Paintings to the left are by Peaks Island artist Paul Brahms.

In the master bedroom, small windows were replaced with larger ones that better showcase the views. The wall lamp is an original George Nelson Bubble Lamp from the homeowners' former midcentury home in Washington, D.C.

The dining room features modern classics like the Robert Venturi-designed table and the Brno Chairs by Mies van der Rohe. While the homeowners did most of the interior design themselves, they turned to their longtime friend and part-time Peaks neighbor, interior designer Michael Bell, for advice.

The deck is the perfect spot to watch boat traffic on Casco Bay. And, almost every Wednesday from mid-May through mid-October, it also functions as "The Clubhouse" for Jim and his sailing buddies who race in the Centerboard Yacht Club Summer and Fall Regattas. "After the race the guys gather here, dripping wet and grinning ear-to-ear, to review strategy and talk trash," says Magal.

The master bath features a porthole window that allows views to the water. Tile is from Old Port Specialty Tile; on the floor is Vihara tile and the wall tile is white back-painted glass by Akdo.

The library features a wall painted in Benjamin Moore's Florentine Blue, an Angela Adams carpet, a Florence Knoll end table, and above the sofa, the photo Yo Yo by Diego Ortiz Mugica. The built-in shelves highlight art from near and far, including torsos by Phyllis Magal (Emily's sister), Blue Whale by Peaks Island artist Kat Farrin, West Virginia State Fair by Mary Noble Ours, and Greenwell's collection of metal buildings and toy cars.

Wherever possible, parts of the property's original structure were reused. Twenty-foot heart pine, Douglas fir, and spruce beams from the boat repair shop, which was torn down, were reclaimed and repurposed as flooring and mudroom cubbies and walls. All first-floor interior doors were salvaged from a convent in Boston.

Magal and Greenwell take in the view from their deck.

Greenwell designed custom adjustable shadow boxes to display artwork, including a Lalique bowl, photographs from the Magnolia series by Leah Magal (Emily's mother), and carved wooden feathers by Gary Yoder.

Overlooking Casco Bay and the Portland peninsula, the living room features the Arco Lamp designed by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni in 1962, chairs by Alvar Aalto, a repurposed table base from the columns originally in the house's parlor, an enameled and copper side table from Burma, and pottery by Phyllis Magal.

Working with architects Stephen and Justin Smith, the homeowners transformed their once-nondescript home, now with stately Federal-style details, including a widow's walk, paneled shutters with scrolled iron hardware, and a vestibule flanked by mirrored hand-forged iron lanterns that mimic candlelight.

Landscape architect Sarah Coffin Witte of Terrence J. Dewan and Associates in Yarmouth created the master plan for the lush grounds and David Eaton of Maine Stone and Landscape in Rockport filled it in with plantings of Merrill magnolia, Kousa dogwood, Boule de Niege and Wilson rhododendron, and on the trellises, American wisteria.

A reclaimed 1940s-era brass ship's lamp from Big Ship Salvage in Pauline, South Carolina, punctuates the sky-blue ceiling of the breezeway. The glass is a prismatic Fresnel lens, which helps focus a beam of light so it can be seen from far away.

The architects reoriented the garage-guesthouse so the garage doors are on the far side, creating "a more gracious front entrance" and improving the view from the street and the ipe wood deck, says Justin.

Perched at the base of the stairs is a pair of lovebirds - male and female eider duck decoys crafted in Maine - and a decorative bufflehead by renowned Maine carver Gus Wilson.

In the parlor, slender Lee Jofa sofas in an unexpected mix of solid and printed linen have a classic-contemporary look that complements the wife's abstract photographs of ice.

A Gus Wilson black duck decoy roosts on a nineteenth-century mahogany bureau in the library, which also features Thos. Moser's New Gloucester Rocker and a print of the New York Yacht Club's Newport, Rhode Island, clubhouse.

On the left side of the library are shelves dedicated to the husband's collection of classical music records. Behind the linen Lee Jofa chairs is a model of an America's Cup yacht with a brightly colored mermaid motif designed by famed pop artist Roy Lichtenstein.

A profusion of pillows gives a kitchen banquette a cozy, sofa-like appeal; the cushions and paisley pillows are custom-designed by Margo Moore Interiors in Camden. The wood-lookalike flooring blends with the home's stained heart pine but is made of low-maintenance ceramic tile.

The husband's office-workout room showcases photographs and awards from a life in competitive cycling and sailing (his Olympic medal hangs to the right of the bike) and midcentury-style furnishings, including a 1960s teak sideboard and button-tufted chair from Room and Board.

In the master bedroom, a walnut Thos. Moser canopy bed and rattan chairs from Pottery Barn echo the post-and-beam ceiling structure, which the homeowners deliberately left uncovered. "We wanted to live with the real soul of the house," says the husband.

A view to the husband's light-filled office through the brick arch that crowns the front staircase; a flock of black duck decoys decorates the ledge.

His-and-hers bathrooms and dressing rooms (his are at left) mean "we can both take our time getting ready - and if I don't tidy up I don't have to worry about offending my bride," says the husband.

Photography by Trent Bell

Photography by Trent Bell

Trent Bell Photography

Mills House, Chebeague Island - Carol A. Wilson Architect

Trent Bell Photography

Trent Bell Photography

Magnus Stark Photography 

Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, East Boothbay - WBRC Architects Engineers

Christopher Barnes Photography

Christopher Barnes Photography

Christopher Barnes Photography

Christopher Barnes Photography

Christopher Barnes Photography

Trent Bell Photography

Margaret Seegers-Musson Photography 

Sauna, Somesville - WMH Architects

Margaret Seegers-Musson Photography

Peter Vanderwarker Photography

Peter Vanderwarker Photography

Trent Bell Photography

Downeast Coastal Residence, Washington County - Winkelman Architecture

Trent Bell Photography