What if, as you were daydreaming and plotting your new home, you thought not about the building but its ruins? What if you imagined what had stood before—and how good it was while it lasted?

Caleb Johnson did this while creating his pocket-sized family home in coastal Biddeford. For the lifelong architect-builder, a conversation with materials is the point, and his home is proof of that perspective: it’s cedar and oak, walnut and wrought iron. Johnson loves materials, the old-fashioned kind—he isn’t stalking trade shows for plastic-laced composite stone that promises lasting performance. His ideal houses have only a handful of ingredients, no seven-syllable words on their packaging. 

“I think about it like this,” he says. “If a piece of house broke off and washed around in the ocean, would I pick it up or throw it out? I’ll tell you this: I’ve never taken asphalt shingle home with me.”

Architects’ and designers’ own homes are always worth listening to closely. Unfettered by the web of choices that renovation and building present, and unobstructed by committee meetings of client, builder, and homeowner, they’re free to ask and answer meaningful questions, not just, But can it be done by Memorial Day? 

If this 850-square-foot Hills Beach house is the answer, then the questions Johnson asked might be, Why do we build? Who and what is impacted? and What legacy will we leave in its wake? 

The architect first arrived in Biddeford right out of grad school and soon founded a firm under his own name. Now 20-plus years strong, the firm goes by Woodhull and includes half a dozen other principals at its helm. The team has crafted dozens of homes in the region, many in Biddeford, including one for Johnson’s parents, one for his former partner and the children they share, and most recently, this one for Johnson and his partner, Shannon Richards, also an entrepreneur in the design-build world. 

Before he could get to the big questions, Johnson needed to resolve the most obvious challenge: to make a functional, pleasurable base camp for himself, Richards, the six children between them, and, on summer nights, the many neighbors and friends who swing through this tightly knit beach town.

To do so, Johnson enlisted a handful of folks inside the firm, including Woodhull’s head of millwork, Scott Stuart. Richards appointed herself to oversee the interiors. (She runs a design, construction, and real estate services company called Hay Runner.) Together they also tapped artisans and furniture makers to leave their thumbprint (among them sculptor John Bisbee), making nearly everything inside either Maine sourced or Maine made. 

The “junky little house” Johnson found on this special slice of beach would have been torn down by most; it’s more cost effective and less hassle. But Johnson didn’t have the heart to do it. Instead, he set out “to make a really ugly house less ugly,” and to respect the area’s low-key vibe. The limitations of owning a sliver of near-beachfront property inspired ingenious solutions. For example, half of the front deck is actually the top of a picnic table custom made to pony up to the actual deck. Sure, zoning requires a minimum setback for a residence, but it doesn’t say anything about movable picnic tables. 

The back courtyard has space for a pair of cars and, thanks to a framework below the surface, the grass stays buoyant and inviting. When the cars are elsewhere, it’s a verdant party courtyard. Inside, the couple made myriad choices meant to keep things running smoothly when kids are in the mix—and there are up to four school-age ones around, depending on the week. To get the most out of the square footage, the four bedrooms upstairs are sans closets, with bureaus and foot lockers picking up the slack. Downstairs, the choicest shoreline views are granted to the petite sitting area up front; the kitchen holds the middle, and a dining area takes up the rear. 

The tidy open floor plan deftly folds small-space ingenuity alongside material pleasures. The furniture is concentrated on the periphery of the room, and the rest is purposely low-profile. Those seaside sight lines are kept intact, back to front. There are concealed functions  (a TV hides behind the drawn curtains) and double duties (the island has kitchen items on one side and office/homework items on the other). 

The dining area does even more. In lieu of a traditional six-top table is a pair of cafe tables. Pressed together, they seat a crowd; apart, they allow more circulation and access to the banquette’s hidden storage. Richards and Johnson drew the pieces loosely based on a surfboard shape, explains Richards, and then called on a steelworker, a woodturner, and a cabinetmaker for their creation. “And it was all done over text,” she says laughing. 

The conversation around the kitchen took a bit more back-and-forth and a lion’s share of the budget. Still, Johnson reports, “At 850 square feet, I get to do what most clients would cut out.” That includes plaster walls with cloudlike depth owing to hand-troweled textures and natural pale pink and blue hues. That’ll run you three to four times the price of drywall, but here, there’s not much wall space. And now, zero gnarly chemicals. 

For the kitchen, Johnson doubled down on his commitment to integrity and charged Stuart with building a kitchen “that a woodworker would be proud of.” They aligned easily. Like the homeowners, Stuart is endlessly dissatisfied with throwaway culture, which, in kitchens, means particle-board boxes clad in veneer—veneer that chips, stains, and ends up in a landfill far too quickly. 

Stuart set out to build a walnut kitchen with fine-furniture appeal. No plywood, no factory-made fasteners like screws and nails. He even took a trip to the Owl’s Head Transportation Museum to study biplane construction, which taught him how to use solid wood to make large boxes sturdy enough for the hardest working room in the house but light enough to “float” off the floor, so as not to overwhelm the space. 

In total, there are three walnut pieces: upper and lower cabinets as well as an island. (And somewhere there is a hidden compartment, but Stuart won’t let on where it is or what’s inside, though he smiles when he talks about it.) The surfaces are cold-rolled ferrous steel, and the result is a centerpiece of the space and a soapbox for Johnson’s ethos.  

“I find myself fighting against designs and products that are best on the day you put them in. Wood just looks good with wear,” he says. “Already, this kitchen has a few dents and some wear on it, and it’s starting to look like an antique. And, 150 years from now, it’ll be a really prized piece from that wear. Wood is special that way.”

Walnut shows up in the powder room too, in a backsplash Johnson into with a mermaid scene taken off a tracing paper sketch by Richards. He carved window frames too; they surround the grandest windows at the front of the house—the gateway between inside and out, between land and sea. It’s a treasure that, if discovered washed up on the shore, would no doubt be collected and cherished by a beach walker, but to Richards and Johnson, it’s just part of their home.