On Thanksgiving weekend in 2018, a couple suggested to their children, who were home from college, that they all take a ride down to Higgins Beach. A stone’s throw from the ocean, where the neighborhood runs into a tidal marsh, they revealed their  surprise. “This is where we’re going to live,” the parents said. 

They weren’t, however, going to live in the 1960s cottage that was sitting on the lot, which they had bought the previous spring. (“We owned it for months before we told anyone,” they recall.) The couple had lots of experience with homes; since returning to the husband’s native Maine after a decade in New York, they had been innkeepers and landlords while also running other businesses. Most recently they were living in a large house that could accommodate both sets of grandparents. But family life had changed, and they were ready to downsize. “We’d been making a list for 20 years,” says the wife. They had a clear vision for the home’s style: “Clean and minimalist; that’s how we both are,” says the husband. They were also committed to high-performance construction and sustainable energy use. In the small space available, they planned to fit in an office and three bedrooms, each big enough for a queen bed so that their children would be encouraged to continue to visit with their future partners. They also wanted every bedroom to open onto a balcony for enjoying the views over the beach and tidal creek (and to get a break from the home’s close quarters when necessary). “We want a place for our kids to come and visit us because it’s a destination, not an obligation,” says the wife. “We want them to come and build memories.”

To design the home, the couple chose Kevin Browne, principal of Kevin Browne Architecture, who is known for working in the clean, minimal style they favor. The lot presented some challenges for the architect. It’s small—just 50 by 100 feet—and subject to multiple sets of specifications due to its location in a shoreland, flood plain, and character district. These meant a small footprint, a low maximum height, a flow-through ground floor that doesn’t include any enclosed spaces, and a cottage style that matches detailed local rules. Browne took it all in stride. “It’s all these little pieces and parts that you can use, with specifics about how they’re used,” Browne says of the codes. “So the question is, how do you put all these shapes together to get the most usable space?” “He never said no to anything,” the wife recalls. “He’d say, ‘That’s going to be a bit of a challenge,’” the husband adds. 

Browne designed a tall, narrow structure to be built on pilings, with room for parking under the house. To fit in all the required rooms under the height restriction, he lowered the back section to allow for three floors instead of two. The couple enters the house via an internal stairway that takes them from their cars to the kitchen, but the character code mandates an outdoor stairway, so there is also a public entrance that brings guests into a mudroom. The first floor holds a kitchen, living/dining area, and office; bedrooms are upstairs. The staggered levels created some complex corners in the stairway, Browne notes: “It created a maze of stairs, a lot of up and down. But Leddy Build Design was able to pull it off.”

“The stairway is my favorite part of the house,” says Paul Leddy, the founder of Leddy Build Design, which he runs with his sons, Ryan and Dylan. “One of our guys, who’s been with me 30 years, was a luthier; he’s my secret weapon. He’s our stair guy. When Kevin and the crew showed up for a tour of the finished house, they looked at it and smiled—‘So that’s how you did that!’” Another challenge for the building team came from the pilings that elevate the house. Despite all efforts, thick wooden poles driven into the ground don’t create a perfectly square, level base. Leddy decided that, in this case, an intervention was needed. “We designed steel plates that would bolt onto the pilings and give me enough room on the top to adjust my frame. Another option would be to build up blocks to make it level, but that can be amateurish and junky. So we took the time to detail custom steel brackets, which are bolted onto the pilings, and the frame is bolted onto the brackets. We’ve got to make sure that it will last.” 

While the homeowners were happy about the idea of downsizing, they were wishing a bit more storage space could be added to the design. Leddy’s team got creative. “We made use of a lot of space that would be unused in normal situations,” says Leddy. “It was really their comments: ‘There’s space up there; can I get to it?’ So there’s really not much wasted space.” Small doors were added to eaves and knee walls to create miniature closets in crawl spaces wherever possible. The kitchen presented a different challenge: it was wrapped in windows to showcase the marsh views, so high cabinets were ruled out. The Leddy team designed floating shelves instead. “They line up with the check rail on the window, so they don’t mess up your view,” says Leddy. 

The interior design is open, bright, and clean—an aesthetic that is about function as well as form for this couple. “I’m a minimalist. I like simple colors, lines, and decor to make the home feel clean, open, and comfortable. I’m a visual person, and minimalism keeps me organized and focused,” says one of the homeowners. “Less is more.” Aiming for “a natural beach look,” she decided on natural wood trims and a single white for all the walls. “I chose all white walls and trim to visually allow the eye to incorporate the exterior view from within the home, which makes me feel calm and relaxed,” she says. With so little ornamentation, the quality of those simple white walls mattered. Small imperfections would stand out, so the team chose to plaster the walls rather than using drywall. “It’s subtle,” says Leddy. “To some eyes you can’t tell, but to people who do this or have a more discerning eye for this stuff, it makes a difference. With any sheen of light, I could probably pick out on a drywall house where your seams are. When you plaster, you just can’t. Everything has this beautiful slight texture and smooth surface.” 

The home is a treat for the discerning eye, with quietly impressive details of craft and design, but one doesn’t have to be highly trained to see that it’s a comfortable, pleasant, well-made place to live. “We lived in a house three times as big, and we still just used these same few rooms,” says one of the homeowners, gesturing around the compact but open kitchen/living/dining area surrounded by views of marsh, sea, and sky. “You don’t really need more.”