FEATURE – OCTOBER 2008

By Joshua Bodwell

Photography Irvin Serrano

Styling Tyler Karu

A Kennebunk village home built with creative design solutions

The great myth of simplicity is that it is easy to achieve.

To the contrary, simple designs require not only great care and close attention to detail, but also an unerring sense of what is essential and what can be eliminated. In Kennebunk architect Sheri Winter has created a home that is Shaker-like in its simplicity and austere in the most complimentary sense of the word.

Black and white, shutterless, and practically devoid of landscaping, the home’s warmth and accessibility comes from its unique contextual links to the neighborhood, balanced proportions, and, yes, its gracefully simple execution.

“Clean is my watchword,” says Winter of her design philosophy. “You design…and then you edit
and edit.”

Throughout the project, an emphasis on function drove Winter to pare back the design and use materials creatively. The result shows that imagination, not a large budget, is often the principal driver of a good design. Winter worked intimately with builder Nelson Raymond to execute her vision.

Located just a few blocks away from Kennebunk’s impressive stretch of grand Summer Street homes, Winter’s neighborhood feels historic but humble. Her home sits in the middle of a tree-lined neighborhood full of turn-of-the-century New England townhouses that display the modest detailing and granite foundations common to the era.

Gently dominating a formerly vacant corner lot, Winter’s home is set back from the intersection and allows space for a wide front lawn. The narrow, four-foot-wide front porch is accentuated by a ten-foot-high roof. “Porches are all about proportion,” says Winter.

When she was designing the porch columns, Winter wanted them to appear substantial, but also add texture to the facade. After poured concrete proved to be too heavy, she cleverly coated PVC pipe with Granitex, a spray coating with a sandy, stucco-like finish. Topped with black beams reminiscent of oriental construction, the porch columns are Winter’s homage to the architectural fretwork common in the area. The insulation panels encasing the foundation were mitered at their edges and also coated with Granitex—a modern twist that echoes the old granite foundations in the neighborhood.

Winter says the decision to include three round windows on the facade surprised even her. “I think it was my way of relieving some of the severeness—it was like a little comic relief,” she quips. A rounded dormer on the home’s long profile adds another softening quality to the exterior, as does the long, tapering side porch. “That was purely a reaction to designing within the boundaries of the lot,” says Winter of the porch. “Sometimes the worst thing is having a square, flat lot that you can do anything on. Lots with odd angles and different grades can lead to much more interesting design solutions.”

To soften the visual dominance of a brown brick chimney, Winter used ground-face concrete blocks stacked in a running brick pattern. “It was a way to use concrete but not use ‘concrete,’” she says. “It’s a more refined look this way.”

Inside, the fireplace is as aesthetically simple as the chimney, albeit significantly more sophisticated, as it is built of white marble. Winter, who holds a degree from the University of Kansas School of Architecture and Urban Planning, was as savvy and practical in her design of the interior as she was with the exterior. For example, Winter put an impeccably organized walk-in closet at the far end of the master bathroom—a decision that both eliminated an otherwise necessary door in her bedroom and created a natural humidifier for her closet: the shower.

A neutral palette was used throughout the home, as was the glossy flooring made of ipê, an extremely dense Brazilian hardwood. The 3,600-square-foot home comfortably accommodates a large open dining room, kitchen, formal living room, and home office downstairs, as well as a den, four bedrooms, and two bathrooms upstairs.
A well-considered visual unity gives the home a pervading sense of harmony and serenity. The ubiquitous chrome hardware is a perfect example of this approach. Though brushed nickel is a popular hardware option these days, Winter quickly realized that each manufacturer has a slightly different interpretation of what “brushed nickel” looks like. Winter instead chose chrome hardware because, she says, “chrome is chrome no matter who makes it!”

To accentuate the home’s neutral palette, Winter mixed in a variety of materials and textures. The downstairs powder room, for instance, features a dark mahogany vanity against a wall of recycled blue-glass mosaic tiles that are irregular and rippling. “Texture is so important,” says Winter. “You can’t have everything so slick.”

The kitchen is a study in the confident integration of materials and textures. The bright, airy space includes two types of wood (cherry and walnut), two varieties of marble, stainless-steel appliances, and several frosted glass-front cabinets. Winter calmed the potential visual cacophony by creating a harmonious organizational scheme

“There are a multitude of materials in here,” she says, motioning around the kitchen, “but because I was able to arrange them in blocks—with long stretches of wood, a cube of stainless, and a punctuation of glass—it doesn’t look hodgepodge.”

Winter then adds a thought that seems befitting for not just the kitchen but her entire home both inside and out: “the complicated is organized to the point that it appears simple.”

Winter says that she was particularly satisfied when her home was accepted by the tight-knit community. Building on a lot that had been vacant for decades, especially a highly visible corner lot, could have raised a bit of ire among the neighbors. But only months after the home was completed, people were asking: Wasn’t there always a house there? Didn’t you renovate it?

“The home’s form is rooted in New England,” says Winter, “but it is a modern interpretation, not a faithful reproduction—the details bring it into the twentieth century.”

In the end, the home is as simple as this: Winter’s design makes bold gestures to the local vernacular without being a slave to it.

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