A Nantucket Home Balances Function and Fun

The team at Carpenter & MacNeille stripped the stairway in this Nantucket home to its frame and rebuilt it with white oak and a graceful handrail that wraps around the newel post. The oil paintings are by Kimberly MacNeille, architect Rob MacNeille’s wife.

The bar area features a new teak ceiling, a Baikal quartzite countertop, and a porthole light from M-Geough in Boston.

The light-filled, oak-ceilinged kitchen and dining area take full advantage of the expansive views and include a marble-and-teak island and a round, expandable dining table, both custom designed and built by C&M.

Interior designer Wendy LeStage Hodgson chose two-toned and striped fabrics as well as a variety of furniture styles to add dashes of color and interest to the living room’s neutral design envelope.

One of the first phases of the renovation included the expansive back porch, where the family likes to start their day, especially on the C&M-designed-and-built hanging couch. Furniture by McKinnon and Harris surround the teak table, which was crafted from a vintage ship’s grate.

C&M gutted an over-the-garage bedroom and renovated it with an award-winning series of bunk beds. The bunks, ladders, wall paneling, drawers, and closets were built in C&M’s mainland mill shop, shipped to Nantucket, and installed by the firm’s carpentry team over a three-week period.

The primary bath’s custom vanity, also designed and built by C&M, repeats on the other side of the room. The fixtures and mirror are from Waterworks, and the tile is from The Tile Room on Nantucket.

The primary bath’s recessed teak ceiling references a lapstrake boat and increases the room’s ceiling height. Silver-wave honed tile installed as planks comprises the floor.

“Make it comfortable. Make it fun. And make it work.” As architect Rob MacNeille remembers, these were the brief, to-the-point directives that his clients gave him when it came to renovating their Nantucket summer home. “That was enough to get us going,” MacNeille says. “It helped, of course, that we’d worked with them on other projects and knew what they liked and, just as importantly, what they didn’t like.”

When MacNeille first saw the island home his clients had purchased a few years earlier, he immediately understood why they’d asked for his help. “The house was tired and definitely needed a redesign,” he says. The site and the ocean views were great, but the home didn’t take full advantage of either.

Because the family occupied the island home during the summer, MacNeille and his team, including interior designer Wendy LeStage Hodgson and the firm’s custom woodworking team, tackled the project in phases, September through May, from 2015 to 2022. “There’s hardly one square inch we didn’t renovate,” says MacNeille.

The first phase of the renovation added a much-needed porch and a kid-friendly bunk room. The porch gave the family the outdoor gathering space they’d never had and worked as a useful transition from the home’s interior to its lush exterior. MacNeille dramatically transformed what he describes as a “plain vanilla” over-the-garage bedroom into what became a six-bed mahogany bunk room.

Like many of the elements in the home’s renovation, the bunk room’s custom furniture and fittings were designed and crafted in Carpenter & MacNeille’s woodshop in Essex, Massachusetts, shipped to Nantucket, and installed by the firm’s team of finish carpenters.

By the time the home’s multiphase renovation was completed, MacNeille and his team had revitalized and transformed everything from the main stairway to the kitchen to the primary bedroom. They even added a new pool, pool house, and an outdoor spa area.

Recently, after hosting a summer party with a house chock-full of happy guests, the owners sent MacNeille pictures of the gathering in an email and thanked them for all their hard work. “Just wanted you to know,” the owners wrote, “this house now works. And, as you can see, it’s fun!”

Says MacNeille, “We couldn’t ask for a better compliment.”

Project Team
Architecture and interior design: Carpenter & MacNeille
Builder: Brant Point Building & Property Management
Landscape design: Sconset Gardener