Last September scrolling through Instagram feeds from my native Maine, I was struck by a small compound of houses on the craggy island of Spruce Head.
Photography by Greta Rybus.
“The idea for the compound was both out of the necessity to house our growing family, and for the aesthetics that multiple buildings in close proximity creates,” says the builder, Anthony Esteves, who has been working thoughtfully on the project for over three years.
“The Cape was originally built in 1754, just south of here, and was dismantled and reconstructed on the island in 1999 by a gentleman named Frank Tichy,” Esteves says. My process here involved uncovering and removing a lot of foreign material.
The farmhouse-style kitchen.
Inside, Esteves took care to maintain the original 1700s details: “The hand-hewed frame, the flooring, sheathing, doors, and front windows, as well as chimney bricks,” plus “interior details such as the mantel, beadboard, and wainscoting panels.” In other places, he strayed slightly from history.
In the kitchen, light filters in through the original paned windows.
In another corner of the kitchen, copper pans hang from iron wall hooks affixed to the timber rafters.
One side of the kitchen is lined with peg rails.
Esteves lights a fire in one of the original fireplaces, which has the original cast iron doors.
The dining room, with black spindle-back chairs and original wide-plank flooring.
Esteves made one major change to the house: moving and rebuilding the main staircase.
A vignette of locally farmed and foraged flowers by Molly O’Rourke, Esteves’s sister-in-law, who owns floral and event design company One & Supp.
Throughout, Esteves painted the walls in plaster and old-fashioned milk paint, with trim in Benjamin Moore’s Apparition. The couch is a John Derian design for Cisco Brothers, sourced from Trillium Soap.
Another corner of the living area, with finds from Marston House and Lisa Tichy.
Beside another fireplace, a black bench from Windsor Chairmakers in Lincoln, Maine.
A built-in hutch, painted gray, holds objets d’art and a dried hydrangea blossom.
In the entryway, more peg rails.
Plaster niches are a surprising detail in another stairwell. I added the small shelves and the barrel arches in a traditional way, with wood lathe and plaster.
In Esteves’s mother’s studio, a narrow table from Restoration Hardware holds objets d’art.
The four-poster bed in the master bedroom is from Windsor Chairmakers in Lincolnville.
In a narrow bedroom, Esteves preserved the under-eaves cabinets, which his mother uses to store spare blankets.
The bath features marble tile and a freestanding bath beneath the original casement windows.
The view of Penobscot Bay.
The exterior is traditional New England modified Esteves sourced roof shingles from Ben Butler a local sawyer but used a thicker Eastern white cedar shingle at five eights of...
...an inch instead of the traditional half inch We still hand drove all the nails and used runs of zinc spaced evenly to help prevent mildew growth he says
The small family compound.