FEATURE-August 2011

by Debra Spark | Photography Irvin Serrano

The remaking of a modest cottage into a boat lover’s home

In 1974, a Florida businessman bought what he describes as “a typical Maine cottage: two bedrooms, a living room, and a little porch.” The house, located in Northport on West Penobscot Bay, was appealing for its shore-hugging location. Water frontage was no small consideration for the businessman. He was—and is—an avid boater. He built his first boat when he was just 13 and now owns a stunning vintage power yacht. But aside from the location, the businessman was attracted by the cottage’s all-wood living room: the ceiling was finished with cherry panels, and the walls and floors were pine.

For many years, the businessman used the home only occasionally, first alone and then, after he married, with his wife. “When we got together, she said, ‘Oh my god: the cottage is okay, but the bathroom is horrible,’” he says. They decided to redo the bathroom in 1989, and they got, as the wife says, “a little carried away.” They pulled the house apart, saving only the living room that so appealed to the husband in the first place. Because drainage issues required the owners to build a cellar underneath the house, they moved the living room to one side of the property. Then, Chris Whittier, a stone mason from Montville, took the chimney down, numbering all the stones and laying them out on the lawn. After the room was placed on a new foundation, Whittier reassembled the chimney so perfectly that the wood trim, which had been carved to fit the contours of the original fireplace profile, could still be used.

The late-eighties renovation was done with the help of several local professionals: architect Christian Fasoldt of Camden, Greg Marsanskis and William Behrens (then of B & M Builders in Montville), and Farley & Son Landscaping in Rockport. At the time, the back porch was enclosed with glass windows and double doors to create a sunroom. A second story with master bedroom was added, and all the floors were redone in cherry. Outside, stonework was added to delineate a new perennial garden.

Curves were an important element of the design. An arched dormer window was placed on the water-facing side of the house. The front porch was transformed into an open porch with a barrel ceiling, and the dining room’s drop ceiling formed a large curve.

Over the years, additional changes were made with the help of Greg Marsanskis, who now operates his own building company, City Point Builders in Belfast. On the property across the street from the cottage, Marsanskis built two additional structures: a boathouse and an adjacent building that includes a workshop and garage on the ground floor and a guest apartment with loft on the second floor. Marsanskis added a basement sewing room to the cottage, transformed an existing shack into a potting shed, and provided some shade for the original house by building a pergola with a 24-foot curved beam to cap a new porch decked with ipê, a durable South American hardwood. He also enclosed the front porch, putting in an arched window that conforms to the barrel ceiling.

A few years ago, the couple made even more changes. They had the kitchen redesigned and rebuilt by Phi Home Designs of Rockport. They also asked Tim K. Tripp, an architect from Florida with whom the couple had worked on other homes, to design a new library. Marsanskis says the library was “a hard project for the homeowners because they liked the shape of their house and didn’t know how to add on.” Tripp devised a small, high-ceilinged building that was connected to the kitchen by a short hallway.

The wife is fond of the renowned architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen, based out of Washington, D.C., so the new library incorporates features that one might see in a Jacobsen home, including a glass cupola, cylindrical white pendant lights, and a dramatic floor-to-ceiling chimney. The boatbuilders at French & Webb in Belfast built the library’s handsome teak shelving and entertainment center, as well as an innovative laminated teak step stool that is used to reach items on higher shelves. The homeowners were quite familiar with French & Webb’s work, given that Todd French and Peter Webb maintain Bellatrix, the couple’s 1956 42-foot Bunker & Ellis “picnic boat,” which was previously restored by Pendleton Yacht Yard in Islesboro. The couple’s relationship with the boatbuilders is close enough that the husband, now retired, bought the company a 10,000-square-foot boathouse when they needed to expand. Ten years later, French and Webb were able to buy the building themselves.

As for the sleek, modern kitchen, there’s a boat connection there, too: the couple first met Michael Roy, the owner of Phi Home Designs, at a boat show in Rockland. Roy developed a kitchen plan using initial design work from Tripp. The wife knew that she wanted to use orange in the kitchen and she wanted it to reference the 1950s Scandinavian teak sideboard in the neighboring dining room. The kitchen now features a wall of stainless-steel tiles, European-style cabinets painted with a pumpkin-colored lacquer, and additional cabinets made of an exotic wood called pau ferro. Phi also used pau ferro for a wall between the kitchen and library and in a freestanding hutch with a stainless-steel base and a middle section that opens into a coffee-serving station. As for the wall: when its ebony handles are pulled, the doors retract to reveal a small bar.

In the same way that the boat has a fun backstory—it was previously owned by actress Kirstie Alley—many of the home’s furnishings come with an anecdote attached. The orange velvet chairs in the library are from the set of the Robert Redford movie The Legend of Bagger Vance. If you touch the underside of the dining room table, it flips over and becomes a snooker table. The sunroom’s breakfast table was originally a French wine-tasting table. The most comfortable chair in the house is the lounger in the sunroom; it came with the cottage.

Perhaps one of the home’s greatest pleasures and surprises is that it elegantly integrates modern European elements with its humble Maine origins. “The American tendency is to overbuild,” says the husband. “I’m so happy we didn’t do that. This house fits us.” Speaking of the boat Bellatrix, Peter Webb of French & Webb says, “We’ve been slowly tweaking it over the years. It’s kind of a perfect boat.” The same might be said of the house. It’s been slowly tweaked over the years, and it’s kind of a perfect house.