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houses

    GALLERY

    Hustle and Flow

    ‘This Old’ new Eastham house is full of ideas

    By

    Collaboration among innovators, designers, builders, and television executives built the 2020 This Old House Idea House, the first of its kind on Cape Cod.

    It started with a design by Union Studios Architecture and Community Design called the “side hustle house” that won a contest sponsored by Cape Cod Young Professionals. Matt Cole, Cape Associates’ president and CEO, liked the design. It offered something different than prior Idea Houses, he told us, including built-in income possibilities and flexibility that could help people make year-round life on the Outer Cape work.

    Cape Associates purchased the rights to the design, then pitched the project to This Old House — and was selected to build it.

    Not many construction projects have to contend with a film crew. Cape Associates had to sequence construction carefully — and not always according to their normal flow. But Cole said that regular communication and teamwork made it work.

    Dubbed the “Cottage on the Cape,” this Eastham home breathes new life into standard Cape Cod home design with an attached accessory dwelling unit, a maker’s workshop in the garage, a light-filled sleeping loft, and plenty of smart features for those days when you must turn on your shower with your phone.

    And here’s to Outer Cape tradespeople: “Cottage on the Cape” was the first-ever This Old House Idea House to finish construction on time.

                    

    Home owners love an open-plan lifestyle, but it can be hard to stash away a big TV. So Cape Associates designers Mike Bremneour and Robin Decoteau put their heads together with interior designer Denise Enright and a team of craftsmen to create a multifunctional piece to anchor the space. One side is a built-in banquette with cantilevered bench seating for the dining table, while the other side looks like a sleek room divider. Its secret is a motorized lift that raises the television into view — or hides it — with the push of a button. (Photos Lukas Scott, courtesy Cape Associates)

    The finished basement feels clean and inviting, thanks to flooring in a striped black-and-white pattern by Marmoleum Click Cinch Loc tile. It’s easy to install and maintain. It’s also natural, nontoxic, and bio-based. The egress window wells offer space for plantings, so garden vibes keep the basement from feeling like a dungeon.

    Jason Smith, cabinet maker at Cape Associates, designed a ship’s ladder for the sleeping loft that won’t intimidate guests. It’s both compact and not too steep with handrails for extra safety. Upstairs, a solar-powered skylight keeps it bright.

    The garage is home to a maker’s workshop, with built-in workbenches, shelving, and pegboard walls. A great space for creative work. The blue epoxy floor is attractive and easy to clean. Less crafty folk could use the space to park a car or host a poker night.

    The attached accessory dwelling unit can serve multiple purposes. Complete with a kitchenette, washer-dryer, and full bath, it’s perfect for aging parents or children transitioning too slowly from the nest. The door dividing it from the main house has locks on both sides, so that “side hustle” — a separate rental unit — is possible, too.

    Starting with insulated sheathing and high-performing insulation in the wall cavity, the building envelope is the first layer of defense against blustery Cape Cod weather. Triple-paned windows and doors and efficient forced-air pumps work to keep the home warm in winter and cool in summer. Monitors test for air quality and control exhaust fans, while Velux skylights automatically close shades or open to adjust to changing temperature and light. The idea is that homes work smarter, not harder, saving consumers on energy bills and preserving natural resources.

    the year-rounder

    ‘How Slight a Shelter’

    What would Thoreau have made of 2020 Cape Cod?

    By

    Henry David Thoreau’s residency, starting in 1845, in a 10-by-15-foot shack next to Walden Pond for two years, two months, and two days is generally considered by scholars as a publicity stunt, or perhaps the first example of performance art. Yes, he built it with his own hands (and 28 dollars, 12½  cents worth of materials); yes, he grew his own beans and corn — but there is evidence that he might have brought his laundry home to his mother and picked up a few free meals in town.

    So, what was his point? Build a small house: “…exercise a little Yankee shrewdness … Consider how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary….”

    Oh, would the man be spinning in his early grave if he could see the world we live in now. (So would our own Harry Kemp, who lived for a time in a converted chicken coop out on the dunes.)

    These thoughts occur to me as my dog and I walk past many large and vacant houses this rainy February day in the East End of Provincetown. Through the windows of a few I can see the covered furniture piled up, waiting for the fair-weather inhabitants or renters to return in a few months. These were not the houses Thoreau saw when he visited Provincetown in 1849, 1850, and 1855. He describes modest dwellings surrounded by fish flakes or drying racks. I am sure he could not have imagined the tourist economy and the incredible appeal of coastal living in what he described as “wild and unkempt” surroundings, “wholly unknown to the fashionable world.”

    It is not just the trophy houses that are large. In my immediate neighborhood, three of my neighbors have recently or are currently enlarging their houses, and another is planning to do the same; around the corner, two more houses are expanding. These expansions require more raw materials (lumber is wood, after all, which comes from trees that grew somewhere), and will eventually require more energy to heat and cool and light them. In the face of the growing threat of climate change, we rightly focus on recycling and other incidentals, but have more trouble facing the effects of our basic activities: shelter and food and transportation.

    It is not just Provincetown and the Cape: since 1950 the average size of a single-family house has tripled, even as family size has basically leveled off. It is not just the rich (the Obama family, by the way, just purchased a $15 million property on Martha’s Vineyard), but all of us expanding our carbon footprints when we can. I probably would do the same, if I had the means.

    So what is my point?

    I am not sure. Thoreau, like Jesus, or Benjamin Franklin, or Karl Marx (or Jon Stewart), can be a guide to living a good life, but we also need to look at things in context. Thoreau could not have comprehended the enormous wealth in this country today, not to mention the financial dynamics of home ownership. Any investment in property on the Cape is probably well worth it — for the time being. He talked of people’s houses keeping them “poor as long as they live.” He was also aware of income inequality, describing the dirt-floored shanties of poor Irish laborers, but could he have envisioned the dangerous extremes of today? He is sometimes referred to as the father of the environmental movement, but it would be unfair to expect him to have foreseen the climate disaster that is barreling its way towards us.

    No, we have to go it on our own. We need to home in on those aspects of our lives that will be most rewarding, to ourselves, to others, to the planet. We need to love, to get serious, and have a good time. We need to avoid a lot of extraneous, distracting, and soul-destructive nonsense.

    “Our life is frittered away by detail,” Thoreau wrote. “Simplify, simplify.”

     

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