While a sense of tradition was important to the project, it didn’t get in the way of innovation. Shaded by forest and cliffs, the house was predictably dark. To bring daylight into the screened porch, Winkelman replaced the roof’s planned cedar shakes with glass. “You can’t call it a glass roof and you can’t call it a skylight,” he says. “You have this texture of the horizontal wood bands of skip sheeting, and it has a border of cedar shakes that frames the glass. The space just glows, even on the gloomiest day. You want to be in it.” The home also puts traditional wood materials to unusual uses—including a wooden walk-in refrigerator and freezer (Winkelman calls it “a technical tour de force”) and an automated entrance gate made from a log.

After the main building was completed, the camp continued to evolve. Holyoke, Richardson, and Winkelman collaborated with the client on projects large and small—a suspension bridge to smooth the way to the “swim rock”; a network of trails, boardwalks, and bridges; a guest cabin; a cliffside firepit destination accessible only by boat; a hot tub that nestles into weathered boulders. “A lot of lip service is given to collaboration,” says Richardson, “but some pretty incredible things came out of the team. We fed off each other’s interests and ideas, had great respect for each other, and had overlapping skills and talents. The client really saw that and put the team in motion. He made sure we were connected, and we were given freedom and support to do something really special together.”

For many years the client had dreamed about adding a pizza oven to an area the family used as an outdoor kitchen, but other projects and needs kept getting in the way. In 2019 Holyoke offered to build the oven as a gift, and Winkelman and Richardson quickly got on board. It was an unusually big and complex project to offer—but this was an unusual client. “We were going to do this thing for this person who has been such a big part of forming the success of my business, my personal growth, my professional growth, my self-confidence,” recalls Winkelman.

Given the state of the residence, the couple knew they would need to renovate and expand the building, but they didn’t rush it. “We owned the home for two years before starting any work, because living in it helped us figure out how we wanted it to function,” says Rolph Lamontagne. Ultimately, the couple consulted with Sybil Przeszlowski of Richard Renner Architects to overhaul the 3,000-square-foot house and build an additional 1,800 square feet for a total of six bedrooms— plenty of space for their three children and grandchild to spread out. The building’s original placement on the site couldn’t accommodate the expansion, however, so the structure had to be lifted and repositioned. “We took the original house down to the bones, keeping the wall and roof systems as well as the staircase, and then added a new foundation and studs,” explains general contractor Joe Lucey, who notes that, despite some ledge issues when it came to excavating a new foundation and the more common challenges of working with old, uneven framing, the project hit its eight-month deadline. “The basic structure remained intact, but it feels like a new home. We opened up the interior to make it feel more modern.”

Throughout the process, the owners relied on the expert eye of Amanda Pratt, a decorator based in New York City and Maine, who was with them from conception to completion. “The original layout was strange, with small bedrooms and not enough baths,” says Pratt. “Their children are older, so we created larger bedrooms with en suite baths, and the rooms are arranged around a central television area.” There’s also a kids’ bunk room for younger children. The new addition contains the primary suite plus a balcony, family room, den, bathroom, mudroom, screened porch (fiberglass panels can be subbed in during cooler months), and secondary prep

kitchen. This prep space, or “scullery” as Rolph Lamontagne refers to it, is a necessity for the chef, who not only trained at the Ritz Escoffier Cooking School in Paris but has written a cookbook about reducing food waste and spent 15 years opening safari lodge restaurants and training cooks in South Africa. “I love entertaining, and during dinner parties I can close the door to the scullery and not have to see any of the mess,” says Rolph Lamontagne of the secondary space, which contains a refrigerator, sink, dishwasher, and coffee bar. “We put the meat and potatoes of the kitchen in the scullery,” explains Pratt. “It was very important that Mary’s kitchen setup make sense and flow well. When someone cares about food so much, I really focus on the ergonomics of the space. I actually went to culinary school myself, so I enjoy designing kitchens for other people and look at it from the perspective of a mom and a cook.” The new kitchen and prep space are a major upgrade from what Rolph Lamontagne had to work with prerenovation: “There wasn’t even a stove when we moved in,” she recalls. “I bought a small one to tide me over until we redid the kitchen, but I ended up keeping it because I hate being wasteful. I sometimes miss not having a high-end range, but after exclusively cooking over a fire in South Africa, I can make anything work.”