The Coastal Façade
Dated and dark no more , this chalet delivers Nantucket summer cottage vibes to South County .
PHOTOGRAPHY THIS PAGE : DIMAURO ARCHITECTS / GALEN HAAS ; OPPOSITE PAGE : COURTESY OF BLAKELY INTERIOR DESIGN / ANDREA PIETRANGELI AND GREG PREMRU PHOTOGRAPHY .
Don ’ t let the façade fool you : This quaint shingled chalet , near the yacht club in Saunderstown , is much larger than it looks . Ron DiMauro , of his namesake DiMauro Architects , designed it that way . The homeowners , a professional couple with children , “ wanted a place to relax the soul ,” DiMauro says , “ to comfort them and to lessen their stress , and they wanted that feeling as soon as they drove up .”
And , wholly judging a book by its cover , DiMauro intuited that the exterior renovations would alter the mood inside the house , too . The old porch obstructed first-floor water views , so DiMauro redesigned it from scratch , simultaneously expanding it while creating an illusion of smallness with shed dormers and heavy brackets resembling exposed roof rafters .
“ This perception lowers the massing and makes the home look more welcoming ,” reveals DiMauro , in spite of its nearly 2,400 square feet . Spindly columns were replaced with sturdier versions that were
INSIDE THE RENO shingled at the base .
“ We also beefed up the fieldstone bases under the columns for a better proportion and we closed off the underside of the porch
BEFORE
— it was an open lattice — with
YEAR BUILT : 1930 one-by-six vertical
PROJECT TIMELINE : wood boards ,” Three months for design and he adds , painted in construction drawings ; ten months to renovate . a foamy green in
TEAM : DiMauro Architects ; homage to the
Pastore Builders sea . The house , once
BIGGEST SURPRISE : “ Their clapboard yellow , was covered porch . The beam given the coastal was so low that you could treatment with white not see the water from cedar shingles inside the house when you pre-dipped in a warm stood up — you had to duck
gray to look like they — so we removed the entire were weathered from covered porch and built a the sun . The roof is red new one .” cedar shingle .
On the second level , a roof overhang was removed , instantly brightening the second-floor master bedroom . There , DiMauro swapped a dated half-round window and casements in favor of a sun deck bookended by porthole-style windows — oval instead of the traditional round , which DiMauro attests are more elegant .
The result ? A cottage aesthetic that ’ s definitive of New England ’ s waterside communities , from Martha ’ s Vineyard and Nantucket to , today , the pebbly shores of Narragansett Bay . dimauroarchitects . com
48 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l MARCH 2022