This Home is Perfectly P-Town

Previous owners had added a widow’s walk when they renovated this Provincetown home in 2008. A fresh coat of paint was all the exterior needed.

The foyer, where oversize cranes bid welcome, doubles as the dining room. The designers painted walls, trim, and ceilings white, then added grasscloth, shown here in the stairway paneling.

The designers gave the primary suite continuity with a sisal rug, then defined the seating area with a Dash & Albert carpet under oversize chairs covered in plush green velvet. Navy leather wraps the bases and trims the shades of the Ralph Lauren sconces flanking the fireplace.

A woven seagrass coffee table sounds a beachy note in the living room, while the Steven King rug introduces pattern.

Navy chairs with woven backs and easy-care white Sunbrella fabric surround the dining table.

The Iris chandelier from Made Goods adds a decidedly glamorous touch to the dining area with its mottled golden base and shades made of Philippine coco beads. The dining table acts like an entry foyer table when it’s not being used for entertaining.

Knotted seagrass shades on the lights above the T-shaped island are a beachy touch.

Not-quite-matching antique tea tables stand in front of the kitchen’s built-in banquette.

“My husband saw the bunny on the wall at Shor and fell in love with it,” the homeowner says about the whimsical sculpture in the wet bar.

The landing forms a style bridge between the first and second floors, repeating the bamboo shades and Ralph Lauren grasscloth from the first floor and introducing coral as a partner for the blue and white.

An adjacent sitting room uses a mix of patterns to pleasing effect, with a boldly striped chair adding spark to the quieter tones in the sofa, toss pillows, and rug.

The blue beaded chandelier from Made Goods above the primary bed is as saucy as a flapper’s dress.

A sitting area in the spacious primary suite illustrates the designers’ faculty for bringing unexpected patterns and colors together.

The designers kept the primary bath’s walls and ceiling of yellow glass mosaic tile but replaced the yellow vanity, tub, and floors with white counterparts.

A guest room sports walls of denim blue Thibaut fabric and rope sconces from Palecek.

It’s a courageous couple who can view a video of a house on the other side of the country and make the decision to purchase it. The owners of this Provincetown, Massachusetts, home live on the West Coast but had been vacationing regularly in the Cape Cod town for well over a decade.

They had contemplated buying once or twice, but the timing was never quite right. Now that they were finally ready, a worldwide pandemic was getting in the way. “Covid had shut everything down,” says one of the homeowners. “But we looked at the house online and fell in love with it.”

He and his husband could see that the dwelling, built in 1900, had been well-constructed and well-cared-for. “It had some of the best woodwork I’ve ever seen in a home,” he says.

Yes, the decor was an ode to yellow, from the sponge-painted living room walls to a primary bath with ceilings and walls of yellow glass mosaic tile, yellow marble vanity tops, and a yellow tub, but, says the homeowner, “I can look past that sort of thing. The bones were beautifully intact.”

The couple were fans of Provincetown’s Shor Home Furnishings & Interiors, frequently buying items and shipping them to their home out West, so it only made sense that they’d turn to owners Herbert Acevedo and Kevin Miller for design advice.

“They wanted the house to have the flavor of old Provincetown, but they also wanted it to have a modern feel,” Acevedo explains. “We combined new and old, antiques juxtaposed with contemporary pieces.”

The design pros repainted walls, ceilings, and trim in a clean, bright white, then used a tawny-hued grasscloth wallcovering here and there to add warmth and texture. The grasscloth makes appearances in the stairwell and in a second-floor sitting room for a visual cohesiveness between the two floors.

On the first floor, where furniture and accessories in a range of blues offer a classic Cape Cod feel, Acevedo and Miller added a fun, modern note by incorporating a mix of patterns and textures. “We like to bring in a lot of texture,” Miller says, noting the living room’s seagrass coffee table, woven sofa upholstery, and velvet-covered lounge chairs.

On the second floor, a Dash & Albert rug on the landing introduces a coral hue to the palette, and the bamboo shades here and in the nearby sitting room signal a bolder use of texture.

The entire third floor is given over to the primary suite, and it’s here that Acevedo and Miller’s fearlessness in mixing color, texture, and pattern is on full display. A cloud-patterned wallpaper from Cole & Son in dreamy silvery-grays makes the perfect backdrop for the designers’ playful pairings. A chair and hassock sport blue fabric in a geometric print, while roman shades and the bed’s duvet depict white birds on a green background.

And then there are the final details, clever accessories such as the foyer’s six-foot-tall crane statues and the bar area’s whimsical bunny head sculpture, that only add to the already abundant charm. Miller and Acevedo’s attention to the particulars have yielded a home that’s a true reflection of its owners.

Project Team
Architectural and interior design:  Shor Home Furnishings & Interiors