Surry Oceanfront Home

Small House, Full Attention

Some of the most rewarding work this office does arrives in the smallest packages. Ervin Architecture takes on projects for what they ask of us, and a house of 800 square feet can ask for more invention than a building fifty times its size — every inch has to earn its place, and every decision shows. This project in Surry was exactly that kind of problem, and it was a pleasure from the first site visit.

Going Vertical Inside a Fixed Footprint

he property sold itself: close to the shore, a largely uninterrupted view of the Union River estuary where it empties into the Atlantic, and a short drive to Bar Harbor and Acadia. What sat on it was an 800-square-foot three-season camp — two bedrooms, one bath, a 20-by-40 footprint. The clients were an older couple whose children had grown, and their ambition for the place was the best kind: a legacy house their children and grandchildren would come up from New York City for and want to stay in. Three bedrooms, three and a half baths, four seasons.

Shoreland Zone land use ordinances held the building to its original foundation, which made the puzzle a good one. The program would not fit in 20 by 40 on a single level, so the house would go up. Investigating the existing structure turned up 2×4 framing at 24 inches on center, built for a camp rather than a second story. Rather than work around it, the team and the clients made the freeing decision together: take the house down to the foundation and rebuild at 1,600 square feet on the same print, with nothing inherited and nothing compromised.

Three Zones on Two Floors

A shoebox foundation wants to produce a nondescript spec-house volume. Getting maximum use out of every inch while also breaking that mass apart is the kind of problem that looks contradictory until it isn’t, and working it out is where this design found its character.

The plan divides into three roughly equal thirds. On the first floor, the front two-thirds hold an open kitchen, living, dining and entry, with a bedroom and ensuite three-quarter bath in the rear third. The second floor follows the same logic: the primary bedroom and its ensuite in the first third, a family room in the middle with project tables for crafts and games and an entertainment center, and a third bedroom with its own ensuite at the end. Because the living volume and the primary suite above it earned more area, the first third was widened slightly, leaving the zones pleasingly asymmetrical.

The existing fireplace was replaced with a stone hearth that now anchors the living space, set against the water view.

Three Volumes in One

The exterior tells the plan. Within a 20-by-40-by-30 volume, three breaks in the roof plane, a juxtaposition of stone and shingle cladding, and a facade offset in the middle third divide the mass into three readable volumes. The form stayed rectilinear because every square foot mattered. Windows were placed by use rather than composition — where the clients wanted a view, there is a window. The result is a house that is modern and unmistakably at home on the Maine coast.

The interior became the clients’ own delight. Ervin Architecture guided windows, doors, dimensional layout, mechanical and electrical systems, waterproofing and exterior finishes, and produced the millwork and metalwork drawings. The clients chose the coastal bunk-bed millwork, the mid-century stair details, the rustic light fixtures, the pastel palette, the live-edge mantle, the nineteenth-century furniture and the modern tile — an eclectic mix of styles and eras that comes together in a wonderfully whimsical coastal way.

Materials Built for Salt Air

The cladding is Maibec Genuine Wood Eastern White Cedar shingle in Bar Harbor Blue, a nod to the town thirty minutes down the coast. The stone is a variety of indigenous species echoing the granite and shale of the nearby shoreline, selected at a scale that matches what the coast itself puts down. The oceanfront deck is Ipê, chosen because ironwood thrives in salt air that wears out almost everything else.

Interior detail was executed by craftsmen working from EA’s drawings: hand-forged iron balusters, custom cabinetry, plantation shutters, and the bunk beds in the children’s room.

Designing for the Long Run

A legacy house has to work for its owners as long as they want to be in it. The clients asked for an accessible bathroom and bedroom on the first floor, and for the elevated front threshold — a good idea anywhere in the Northeast — to be able to take a ramp whenever it is wanted. Inside an 800-square-foot building footprint, every bathroom in the house was made ADA compliant.

Envelope First

Rather than spend on wind, solar or geothermal, the team put the money where it does the most work in a Maine winter: the thermal envelope. Closed-cell spray foam at R-35 in the walls and R-55 at the roof, with Marvin tri-pane glazing at every opening, cut the BTUs required to heat and cool the house substantially. The clients added propane over oil, low-flow plumbing fixtures, and recycled material for the floors and ceilings.

What It Cost