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Rustic

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Community Building

Community Building

BY DONNA TUNNEY

The windswept dunes of Sandy Neck stand as the backdrop to Barnstable Harbor’s sparkling blue water as one contemplates the outstanding views from an open-concept kitchen and living room in this newly constructed home. A panoramic window, fully eight feet across and five feet high, gives the impression one can reach out and touch those dunes.

Nestled on a hilly bayside lane near Barnstable Village, the house was rebuilt from the foundation after a fire caused irreparable structural damage. The traditional wood-shingled home that stands today has classic Cape-style bones, with, for instance, the center hall stairway directly opposite the front door, but boasts plenty of modern touches, too.

“The idea was to keep it historic and within the same footprint, but modified,” says builder Andrew Prchlik, owner of West Barnstable-based construction firm Whalebone. He used red cedar roof shingles to complement white cedar on the exterior walls, while a set of doric columns across the front porch extends a gracious welcome.

The columns are repeated along the back porch, adding elegance to a stone patio that leads to several outdoor living spaces, including two pergolas with sitting areas, an in-ground swimming pool, a tennis court, a barbecue area, and plenty of green space for lawn games.

Prchlik designed the outdoor living spaces and landscaping, too, adding the pergolas, for example, that enhance the 1-acre-plus property. The sports court and the pool already were in place. But Prchlik’s influence is best seen inside the 3,500-square-foot house, which has four bedrooms, three full baths, and a half-bath.

“There’s a lot of Andrew in this house, and a lot of the homeowners, too,” says the project’s interior designer, Elaine Bellefeuille, owner of Harwich-based Belle Interiors. “The owners said they wanted a kind of industrial rustic style in the interior spaces, and they had cut out pictures from magazines to show what they had in mind. We could see the consistency in those pictures and we created, based on that.”

In this case, industrial rustic comes in the form of an earthy color palette highlighted by rough-hewn wood beams and dark metal stair railings and fixtures. Some aspects are more traditional, such as a floor-to-ceiling New England fieldstone fireplace that has multiple shades of beige and brown, giving a cozy sitting room a dramatic, and useful, accent wall.

“They left a lot of the design for us to do,” adds Prchlik. “We took their vision, and the goal wasn’t to replicate it but to put it in our own vernacular. In the end it feels very similar to what they described. Working with homeowners, I always find that the relationship is an intimate one.”

The front of the house faces west, toward the street, while one side faces north to those gorgeous water views. Entering from the two-car garage at the home’s southern end, visitors stroll through a wide hallway that functions as a kind of mudroom. Dark gray stone flooring was selected for wear-and-tear sturdiness, since the hall would be the primary entry and exit point for the resident pooch. A contrasting white board-and-batten wainscoting graces its interior wall.

With the exception of the hallway and a seasonal sunroom, all of the flooring in the house is white oak.

The hallway leads to a sitting area on the right, home to that fabulous fireplace. The central stairway just inside the front door separates the sitting area from the most spacious part of the home, the combined kitchen and living room, a convivial space where the focal point is the bigger-than-life picture window. To its right, a second, smaller picture window, flanked by two paned windows, frames a breakfast nook.

The highlight of the kitchen is its island, which stretches nearly the full width of the room. A white quartz countertop is a handsome contrast to the steel-blue/gray paint on the island’s cabinetry, loaded with storage spaces. Even the stainless steel oven/stove incorporates the rustic look, thanks to a piece of rough-hewn wood that serves as the edge of the stove hood. Built-ins and wood beams across the ceiling give the kitchen a farmhouse feel.

A three-season sunroom off the kitchen has a beachy vibe, featuring three walls of windows that look out onto the expansive yard. A half-bath on the first floor shows off a live-edge maple counter with a colorful basin sink.

At the opposite end of the kitchen a first floor master bedroom suite rounds out the main level of the home. It has an accent wall of square-edged wainscoting panels. Its large bathroom has a soaking tub and walk-in shower, and the décor adds splashes of blues and grays. The bedroom’s windows look out onto the pool.

The second floor houses three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and another sitting room, this one on the north-facing side of the home and taking full advantage of panoramic water views. A barn door closes off the sitting area, which is flooded with light from a set of angled picture windows. White shiplap on the walls and ceiling make for a nautical atmosphere, and double doors lead to a spacious deck.

“Andrew angled the shiplap to match the shape of these windows,” Bellefeuille points out. “That’s the kind of detailing where you can really see his influence in the home.”

The upstairs bathrooms are eye poppers, with one having a dramatic, metal-paned shower door and white subway tiles with black grout and here again the industrial character shines. The second bedroom has an en suite bath with two doors, one from the bedroom and a second door opposite, leading to a hallway that accesses the third bedroom, situated over the garage.

“It’s sort of like a jack-and-jill bath,” says Prchlik. A stairway in that hallway ends at the first-floor door to the garage, where the mudroom hallway begins.

Most of the furnishings were hand-picked by the owners, says Bellefeuille. While they seemed clear about what they wanted, the owners routinely asked her opinion about their choices. Ditto for the paint colors.

“I generally take clients to other houses that already are using the colors they are considering so they can see what they look like on the walls, rather than make decisions from swatches, because for one thing, paint can look different based on the lighting of a room,” she notes.

Bellefeuille chose all of the lighting fixtures in this home, based on the owners’ tastes, and while the lion’s share of the lights are recessed, there are notable exceptions. One that stands out for its elegance, and a bit of whimsy to boot, is a chandelier that hangs from the top of the home’s soaring central stairway.

Looking similar to a wind chime, the fixture is a series of clear glass spheres, each about the size of a softball and containing an LED bulb. The spheres hang at varying lengths on thin metal cable wires, reaching about 12-feet-long at its most lengthy point.

And there’s more whimsy at this home. On its cupola atop the garage, a weathervane alters course with the wind, but unlike many on Cape Cod, which often feature a whale or heron or fish, this one comes in the shape of a dog, a tribute to one of the home’s VIPs.

Resources

Builder

Whalebone

West Barnstable whalebonehomes.com

Additional construction

BW Construction

Lakeville bwconstruction remodeling.com

Interior Design

Elaine Bellefeuille

Belle Interiors

Harwich

Tile

HS Tile Pro

Hyannis hstilepro.com

Reclaimed beams

Stonewood Products

Harwich stonewoodproducts.com

Longleaf Lumber

Cambridge longleaflumber.com

Fireplace

Sandwich Fireplace sandwichfireplaceinc.com

Landscaping

Vequetini Landscape

Construction vequetinilc.com

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