A beach house that stopped fighting the salt air

This 1962 raised cottage had been patched, not renovated, through four decades of storms — vinyl flooring over rot, particle-board cabinetry swollen at every seam. The clients wanted the house to feel the way it looked from the street: unmistakably a beach house, but one built to actually live in the salt air rather than merely survive it.

We rebuilt the kitchen in white oak treated for marine humidity, married to a Vermont marble that reads bright even under the flat grey light of a February nor'easter. Every lower cabinet has a raised toe kick and drainage detail that a flood inspector would recognize; nothing about it looks institutional.

The screened porch — really a third of the house's living space in the warm months — got true mahogany decking and ceiling fans sized for the porch's volume, not its square footage. It's the room this family actually lives in from April to October.

Camille's material direction leaned into rope, linen and bleached oak rather than the navy-and-white cliché the street is full of. The house reads coastal without reading like everyone else's coastal house.