Beach/House, Fall 2024

Scaling Up 

in the East End 

page 3 

Reclaimed 

Memories 

in North 

Truro 

page 6 

FALL 2024

2 | Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | Fall 2024 

A N A R T I S T O W N E D S H O P I N T H E H E A R T O F W E L L F L E E T 

L O C A L A R T • C E R A M I C S • T E X T I L E S • J E W E L R Y 

3 1 3 M A I N S T , U N I T # 5 , W E L L F L E E T , M A 

@ S H O P I S A B E L S O U Z A • I S A B E L S O U Z A S T U D I O @ G M A I L . C O M 

Shadows lengthen. The crowds are gone. The weather is at its most 

glorious. Autumn arrives and cozy season begins on the Outer Cape. 

It’s the time of year when people here head back indoors to tackle 

some of the household projects that were impossible to even think 

about during summer’s hubbub. Evenings that were spent dining 

outdoors are now savored in front of a fire. In this issue, we’re easing 

our way into the fall projects that come before the year-end holidays 

and the promise of the new year ahead. 

Guest editor: Stephen Orr 

Contributors: Hannah Oakland, Kai Potter, Dorothea Samaha, Abraham Storer, 

Agata Storer 

Design: Susan Abbott 

Sales team: Cooper Joseph, Hannah Oakland, and Martine Taylor 

Escape the garden 

for the wilds. 

ON THE COVER: The compact top-floor den of Ryan Stanton and Robbie 

Goldstein’s East End condo is enveloped by Rutland wallpaper by Cowtan & Tout 

and features storage built-ins and views over the rooftops to the bay. Framed 

Cynthia Packard sketches pay homage to the Packard Gallery next door. 

(Photo by Sean Litchfield; styling by Sean Donovan; cover design by Chris Kelly) 

Outer Cape Cod in 

the quiet season 

By Kai Potter 

shop.provincetownindenpendent.org

Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | Fall 2024 | 3 

Upstairs, 

Downstairs 

Going big on design gives a small house room 

for entertaining and for retreat 

Reclaimed-wood cabinets contain dishes, serveware, and a pantry in the kitchen and dining area 

on the main floor. The cabinets are painted in semi-gloss Green Smoke by Farrow & Ball. Ryan 

Stanton recovered the antique couch in a white Pierre Frey boucle. “Everyone thinks that I’m 

insane for using it as a dining sofa,” he says. “So far, there’s only been one candle wax incident 

but that’s been hidden by a pillow.” (Photos by Sean Litchfield; styling by Sean Donovan) 

By Stephen Orr 

Provincetown is a high-density 

town. Case in point, what once 

was a small home in the East 

End with two buildings on a narrow 

lot recently became three condos 

squeezed into the previous buildings’ 

footprints. There was no room 

for the builder to go out for the 2021 

down- to- the- studs new build, so he 

went up, doubling the one- and- a- 

half stories to three on the rear unit. 

For Ryan Stanton and Robbie Goldstein, 

prospective buyers, it definitely 

wasn’t love at first sight. 

The vertical stack of rooms joined 

by narrow staircases posed both design 

and practical problems that the 

couple, who also live in Boston, felt 

they would not be able to overcome. 

“We looked at the property when it 

was about 60 percent done,” says 

Stanton. “I think a lot of other potential 

buyers struggled to figure out 

how to utilize the space,” which is 

only 720 square feet, just 240 square 

feet per floor. 

Stanton, who has his own interior 

design company, Stanton Schwartz 

Design Group, was ready to move on 

with the search when Goldstein, the 

commissioner of the Mass. Dept. of 

Public Health, came up with the idea 

to rethink the floor plan and change 

the two- bedroom unit into a onebedroom, 

freeing up a top floor aerie 

that’s now a secondary living area. 

“For me, that space was the reason 

we bought the house,” Goldstein 

says. “It has everything I want for a 

place in P’town. You can see out over 

the town and the sea.” 

Once the layout was resolved, the 

couple asked the contractor to stop 

speccing the remaining materials 

and fixtures so they could personalize 

the project as it was being finished. 

“It was basically just white walls and 

subflooring, so I was able to get my 

hands on all of the paint colors, the 

marble, the hardware, the bathroom 

fixtures, the vanities, and all of those 

types of details,” says Stanton. “I had 

the chance to layer in our own flavor. 

It was, quite honestly, an interior designer’s 

dream come true to be able to 

get in early.” 

Much of the house’s sophisticated 

color scheme is inspired by a certain 

piece of stone that Stanton had 

tucked into his memory. “Two years 

before we bought the house, I went 

countertop shopping with a client 

and fell in love with the Italian marble 

that you see throughout the house,” 

he says. “I found it completely mesmerizing 

from the instant I saw it.” 

Finally able to use it, he deployed it 

liberally in the kitchen counters and 

backsplash, the upstairs bathroom, 

the third- floor built- ins, and even a 

little remnant on the outdoor patio. 

Its rich palette of dark greens, pinks, 

and blacks in wave- shaped patterns 

inspired the fabric and paint palette 

that knits together the entire house 

in ways not normally seen at a beach 

continued on page 4 

Robbie Goldstein, left, and Ryan Stanton stand in front of their house. An outdoor entertaining 

area accommodates dinner guests on the front porch. (Photo by Stephen Orr)


Upstairs, Downstairs 

continued from page 3 

residence. “We could have gone with 

more of a super- casual beach feeling, 

where the furniture is more of an afterthought,” 

says Stanton. “But we 

didn’t want to get too formal either.” 

To tackle the problem of the small 

rooms, Stanton turned to lessons he 

had learned designing other people’s 

homes. “We tried to scale things on 

the larger side,” he says. “People feel 

like they should do the opposite and 

go smaller with the furniture and fixtures. 

For instance, over three floors 

we have four very large sofas indoors 

and out. We wanted to make sure it 

was a place where as many people as 

possible could be comfortable.” Many 

of the design solutions involve builtins, 

since there was no way to get 

couches or armoires up the slim stairs 

and hallways. 

Stanton took other chances that 

most people would find risky in compact 

settings, such as a liberal use of 

patterned wallpaper both in the firstfloor 

powder room and the top- floor 

den. “When I first walked into the 

space as it was being built, everything 

was stark white,” he says. “I’m naturally 

moody, so I tried to find ways 

to layer in a mood.” Stanton had been 

waiting for a chance to use the wallpaper. 

“No client ever wanted it, but 

I went big and covered the walls and 

ceiling. When the windows are open 

it feels like you’re in a tree house. It 

brings down your blood pressure.” 

Stanton also had the luxury of 

being able to tap his various vendors 

to think through custom built- in 

storage possibilities because of another 

odd aspect of the house — it 

has no closets. The undersides of 

“It needed to be a workhorse,” says Robbie Goldstein of the galley kitchen that can house only smaller Italian appliances and a half-size refrigerator. 

“I can still make dinners for 20 people in it.”


the bed have built- in drawers. The 

nightstands are also used as dressers. 

“Thankfully, we have additional 

storage in the basement for things we 

don’t access much,” he says. 

The house is built for entertaining. 

Goldstein, who is a passionate 

cook, loves having people over, 

whether it’s two or 16. “Robbie’s task 

is always the menu,” Stanton says. 

“We’re never in the kitchen together, 

because that’s a recipe for disaster. 

My task is ambience.” The house 

has speakers on every floor and the 

same candles burning throughout 

the house so that guests are receiving 

the same subtle scents and sounds 

as they move up and down the stairs. 

Goldstein loves the feeling of having 

a lot of people around one of their indoor 

or outdoor dining tables, even if 

it can be a bit tight. “For me, it’s that 

cozy feeling you get being surrounded 

by friends while you’re eating,” he 

says. “I think the Danes call it hygge.” 

This is a social house that’s 

meant to entertain guests, even if 

most of them can’t sleep over. “Our 

friends are still angry at us that we 

did not keep the second bedroom,” 

says Stanton. “So, yeah, this house 

is designed to entertain — but it’s 

also designed to be a nice refuge once 

people leave.” As nice as it is to see 

guests come, it can be just as nice to 

see them go. 

Stanton swapped out the original glass shower stall for his favorite Italian marble in the secondfloor 

bathroom. All the custom built-ins in the house are white oak. 

A mudhead-style portrait by Julian Cardinal hangs in the first-floor stairwell. 

A second-floor terrace off the bedroom is another spot to entertain friends while Goldstein 

cooks downstairs. 

The same Rutland wallpaper as in the den decorates the ground-floor powder room. Sconces 

throughout the house are by Roman & Williams Guild.


One of two kitchens in the house. Braunwyn Jackett is the in- house interior designer and Nate McKean the in- house builder and woodworker. (Photos by Agata Storer) 

In Truro, Memories of 

Old Provincetown 

At home with Nate McKean and Braunwyn Jackett 

By Abraham Storer 

Braunwyn Jackett and Nate McKean describe their North 

Truro house as having an “old- school Provincetown” 

aesthetic. “This is how we grew up,” Jackett says. The 

couple have deep Outer Cape roots. They dated when they 

were students at Provincetown High School and then went 

their own ways. McKean developed his construction chops 

in San Francisco and then Colorado, where there was a vibrant 

alternative building scene. He worked on everything 

from straw houses to post- and- beam construction and 

stucco buildings. After reconnecting out West, the couple 

moved back to the Cape 22 years ago and ended up making 

their home in Truro. 

When Jackett first walked into the house that she now 

shares with McKean, she knew it had potential. “Everyone 

thought we were crazy when we bought this house,” she 

says. “It needed a lot of work.” A friend had been living 

there and maintained an open, spacious floor plan. “It was 

a big hippie house,” says Jackett. “That’s why I wanted it.” 

Jackett and McKean have been renovating the home since 

2006, guided by a desire to preserve the feeling of that initial 

encounter. 

Burdened with mortgage payments, the couple didn’t 

have much of a budget for renovations or furnishings. But 

McKean, who is a contractor, was doing remodeling work 

in Provincetown and kept an eye out for discards and offcuts. 

“I was the dumpster diver guy,” he says. 

Working with found wood, McKean started out with 

simple projects: a coffee table and then a bed. The massive 

bed is constructed with large beams and an intricately 

carved headboard that he found at the swap shop. “It’s a 

challenge whenever it needs to be moved,” says McKean. 

“I love that it’s not perfect,” adds Jackett. “It tells a 

story of salvaged things.” 

Gradually their projects became more ambitious. “I 

give Nate ideas and he goes to town,” says Jackett. One of 

her ideas involved found tin, which McKean used to create 

a coffered ceiling by framing the tin in a tiered wooden 

grid. Another ceiling was constructed from the subfloor 

of a home on Montello Street in Provincetown. The thin 

Nate McKean and Braunwyn Jackett at their Truro home.


‘The house has grown with us 

and there’s a piece of us in 

each stage of the construction.’ 

— Braunwyn Jackett 

strips of wood reveal their age through stains, gradients of color, and 

the occasional rusty nail. McKean makes sure to clip all of the nails, but 

he doesn’t remove them or heavily sand the wood, preferring to leave 

traces of its past lives. 

The house, built in 1900, revealed some of its own treasures during 

the renovation. In one room, McKean removed the sheetrock and was 

captivated by the wood underneath. Rather than put insulation between 

the studs and build new walls with sheetrock, McKean left the wood 

exposed and affixed insulated panels on the outside of the house, over 

which he attached plywood and shingles. The result leaves the interior 

feeling beachy and rustic, alluding to the Outer Cape’s dune shacks and 

summer cottages. 

Jackett doesn’t mind their home’s continual evolution. “The house 

has grown with us, and there’s a piece of us in each stage of the construction,” 

she says. At first, they divided the house into two spaces: they 

rented out one half and the other was where Jackett and McKean lived 

with their three children. Their section of the house was once a barn, evidenced 

by the high, pitched ceilings. Now that the space is unified, they 

have the benefit of two kitchens and more space for hosting gatherings. 

As McKean developed his skills and creativity doing this renovation, 

the work opened a way for other professional opportunities. For about 

10 years he made custom furniture from salvaged and reclaimed wood 

for clients. Six years ago, he returned to contracting and established 

McKean Artisan Builders, which specializes in construction projects using 

reclaimed wood. Renovating the Mary Heaton Vorse house for interior 

designer Ken Fulk was one of the company’s first jobs. 

Fulk wanted the historic Provincetown home to be restored but 

made to look as if it hadn’t been touched. “We picked the house apart 

piece by piece and labeled every piece,” says McKean. 

Working on the closet- sized library at the Vorse house, McKean 

borrowed an idea from his own house. He proposed partitioning off the 

library using old window sashes from the house. Fulk liked the idea and 

gave him the green light. 

These days, McKean, who supervises a crew of 17 builders, is busy 

with houses other than his own. But Jackett says that doesn’t mean their 

renovation project is over. 

“I don’t think it will ever be finished,” she says. 

McKean says that, in addition to drawing on local aesthetics, the house integrates his experiences living in 

Hawaii, Mexico, Colorado, and Northern California. 

Make life happen 

with the equity in your home. 

Are you looking to renovate or build an 

addition? Maybe you’re planning for a vacation 

or paying off debt? Nikki Rickard is your savvy 

local partner who can help make that happen 

with a Home Equity Line of Credit. 

NMLS #22392 

Contact Nikki at 617.605.3667, 

nrickard@mycapecodbank.com. 

MEMBER FDIC | MEMBER DIF | EQUAL HOUSING LENDER | BANK NMLS #520663


In Truro, Memories of Old Provincetown 


McKean and Jackett capture an “old- school Provincetown” vibe in their interiors. (Photos by 

Agata Storer) 

Jackett found many of the light fixtures on Etsy. 

McKean made the sitting- room wall from reclaimed windows, an idea that he brought to his 

renovation of the Mary Heaton Vorse house.

Custom Building and Real Estate Services 

LaBargeHomes.com 

508-432-6360 

Credits: LDa Architecture and Read McKendree Photography

AMZehnder 

Gallery 

Contemporary Art, Craft and Design 

MFM 

Interiors / Art 

MFM Interiors, Truro 

By appointment. 

508-364-1272 

mfmint@comcast.net 

A. Zehnder “Surfacing, Page One,” 9 × 13 inches, low-fire clay with glaze 

25 Bank Street No. 3 

Wellfleet 

amzehnder@amzehnder.com 

@amzehndergallerystudio 

(508) 560-8249 

You Dream It. 

We Build It. 

From Eastham 

to Provincetown 

1532 US 6, Wellfleet 

508-237-7262 

Thorcapecod.com


A grass compass seen last winter at Newcomb Hollow Beach 

in Wellfleet. Blades of beach grass carving circles in the sand 

inspired the writer’s project. (Photo by Kai Potter) 

A weight, a wire, and a nail are cobbled into an apparatus that 

would mimic the action of a beach grass compass, carving 

circles into slate. (Photo by Cole Barash) 

A scratch circle the writer created by leaving a compass 

apparatus set up on an old slate roof tile on the beach over the 

winter. (Photo by Cole Barash) 

Scratch Circles 

Stories of the winter wind, the compass grasses, and the sand 

By Kai Potter 

We stood on the steps of the dune shack, 

chipped enamel cups full of strong coffee 

in our hands, and looked out over a world 

made clean and new. The footprints we left in the 

sand in the days before, records of our coming and 

going, were buried and smoothed over. The tumbling 

and skipping of grains of quartz and feldspar 

had filled our steps like windblown snow. 

I had waited for this chance to be in the dunes 

to think and write and live in a shack for a week 

with my partner, Eli, as if in some simpler time. A 

wind had been blowing off the ocean and through 

the hollows of the Province Lands for days when 

we got there. And all through the night it whipped, 

spraying the seaward side of the shack in sharp, 

sand- filled gusts. The pounding woke us and kept 

us restless and tight- chested until dawn. Out in the 

dunes, all the world, its rawness, beauty, and indifference, 

feels close to the skin. 

The morning was still. The wind had calmed to a 

light breeze, its fit had passed, its discontent blown 

out. Now it rested. We stepped from the wood stairs 

onto the smooth sand and walked to the beach, past 

the gap in the snow fence with its twisted wire ends 

that grab at your shirt, down the little dune, and to 

a trail nestled into a broad sandy valley edged with 

heathers, beach plums, and dune grass. 

We saw no other signs of steps in the sand. No 

human footprints, no winding snake’s path, no 

lobed paw prints of the fox. No living thing had left 

its mark yet today. Except one. Around each clump 

of dune grass, drawn in a clean line in the new sand, 

was a perfect circle. 

I’ve always called these marks grass compasses. 

But they are also known as scratch circles, and 

they appear on coastlines throughout the world, 

wherever there is sand, grass, and wind. Scharrkreis, 

a German word meaning “scrape circles,” is a term 

that archaeologists use to refer to versions left in 

sediment and discovered in the geological record 

dating as far back as the Precambrian. 

In the dunes, with time and space to sink deep 

into my fascination with these compasses, I would 

lie on my stomach on the sand, chin resting on my 

hands, and watch them form, one gentle breath of 

wind, one trembling blade, one grain of sand at a 

time. The wind, a subtle energy, comes down and 

moves through the dunes. The grass, a sensitive 

living instrument, responds. Its blades sway, pivoting 

from the central point of the stem, sweeping 

in little starts and broad, graceful arcs, turning like 

the needle and chisel points of a drawing compass. 

The tip of the blade brushes gently over the forgiving 

medium, and in a slow, patient, creative process, 

the sand yields to the sweeping of the grass, 

becoming a canvas for the process, telling the story 

of its own creation. 

After we left the dunes, the circles remained in 

my mind, and I set about finding a way to recreate 

them. 

I built a series of little apparatuses intended to 

act like clumps of beachgrass. They started simple, 

became more complex, and then, guided by nature’s 

designs, returned to simplicity. I used a weighted 

base and incorporated wheel bearings, an upright 

bolt for a stalk, steel wires as blades of grass, copper 

sails to feel the wind, and heavy nails fastened 

to the wire tips. 

These models needed to be sensitive enough 

to feel a light breeze and sturdy enough to last the 

winter, because the plan was to set them out in the 

dunes closer to home in Wellfleet. In October, Eli 

and I carried them out to Newcomb Hollow Beach, 

set them on old slate roof tiles that would bear the 

Scratch circles in a show at Gallery 7a in Provincetown. (Photo by Cole Barash) 

mark of the blades’ movements, and left them to sit 

until April. They lasted through winter storms and 

spring nor’easters, turning in the wind, inscribing 

circles in the stone. 

I don’t know why I felt compelled to recreate 

these stories of the wind, the grass, and the sand, 

but it seems I was not the first one to do it. Archaeologists 

working in South Africa believe that a recently 

discovered batch of Scharrkreis fossils there, 

100,000 years old, might have been made by early 

hominids. They would have observed sedge grasses 

drawing circles and, in a moment of inspiration, 

felt compelled to recreate them. If this is true, those 

scratch- circle fossils would be some of the earliest 

evidence of our human ancestors depicting prehistoric 

life. Early humans, sensitive observers, telling 

a story, making art. 

A collection of Kai Potter’s “On the Landscape” columns 

was published this year by Provincetown Independent 

Books. See shop.provincetownindependent.org.

At a Truro property, Keith LeBlanc left a pine that had died long before he started the project standing on a slope. It functions as piece of driftwood sculpture and haven for birds and 

wildlife. (Photo by Neil Landino) 

Blurring the Edges 

A landscape architect’s advice on how to help your garden — no matter how big or small — 

fit an Outer Cape setting 

By Stephen Orr 

Keith LeBlanc has focused for 

years on designing landscapes 

and gardens that eschew suburban 

ideals of clipped lawns and 

formal flower beds while seamlessly 

blending into our Outer Cape 

ecosystem. We asked the longtime 

Truro resident, who is principal 

of LeBlanc Jones Landscape Architects, 

to talk about the ways in 

which a property he designed for 

a local client makes a useful case 

study for helping any gardenmaker 

be successful in working 

with our rich palette of plants and 

geology instead of against it. His 

concepts are transferable enough to 

give any size project, from a small 

village back yard to a property in 

the woods, a stronger relationship 

to the wildness that surrounds us. 

Boundaries 

“We think about edges from the 

get- go,” says LeBlanc. “You’ve 

heard the expression, ‘Good fences 

make good neighbors.’ But isn’t it 

more interesting for people not to 

know exactly where the edges are? 

I love to blur the boundaries so it’s 

not immediately apparent where 

things end or begin. On the other 

hand, sometimes it adds to the design 

to say this is an edge. Maybe it’s 

a very tight situation. That restriction 

might give us a design opportunity 

to do an interesting fence, 

or a hedge, or a looser hedgerow of 

mixed plants. 

“We’re always trying to be less 

invasive in our projects, especially 

for larger properties like this one in 

Truro, which started out as an antique 

Cape with several additions 

and outbuildings. We want as little 

disturbance in the landscape as 

possible. Whether it’s an addition or 

putting up a new house, we’re very 

cognizant of how much disruption 

is required. Usually, a contractor 

will tell us their big trucks need 100 

feet, 360 degrees around the house. 

But we counter that by identifying 

trees that we want to keep, or we 

ask if the cleared area has to be all 

the way around the house. In terms 

of the edges, anything we can save 

will preserve some of the valuable 

existing conditions and natural 

setting. 

“Editing the edges is important 

while taking advantage of what’s 

right beyond your property. If 

you’re in a small back yard and the 

neighbors have a cloud of bayberry, 

why don’t you add one on your 

side that fits in with your design 

and borrows a bit of their yard? It 

makes both seem bigger. Let’s say 

there’s a fence — if they have a rose 

of Sharon on their side, put a rose of 

Sharon on your side. Your eye will 

connect them when you look out.” 

Plants and Lawn 

“When we were brought in on the 

project,” says LeBlanc, “the owners 

had a garden near the house 

with various perennials: artemisia, 

lavender, heather, and sedum next 

to an existing deck. But they told 

us they didn’t want to add more 

gardens that needed a lot of maintenance. 

Moving outward from 

the house to the views, there was 

a large lawn. We reduced its size 

and brought the edge of it closer 

to the house. Because we are in a 

conservation setback, we planted 

those areas with native grasses 

and shrubs. Closer to the house, we 

started to mix lavender with some 

of the ornamental grasses to tie the 

natural with the garden areas. 

“Our firm has always been 

native happy,” says LeBlanc. 

“Twenty- five years ago, it wasn’t 

so, but now people are embracing 

ecological reasons as they’re making 

decisions. 

“When it comes to lawn, we 

always ask our clients why they 

A mix of grasses and perennials frames views of Pame

isn’t once a week. We also have clients 

who are irrigation-conscious 

enough that they’re OK with the 

lawn becoming toasty in midsummer, 

even if it’s a summer house. 

In August, if it rains, then the lawn 

comes back. Generally speaking, 

lawns that allow some wild growth 

such as dandelions, crabgrass, and 

clover can be maintained by hand.” 

Trees 

“It’s educational to show our clients 

which trees are valuable and which 

are less so,” says LeBlanc. “Especially 

those that are invasive species 

or so diseased that they might 

fall on the house. A lot of urban areas 

have trees that have outgrown 

their usefulness. Removing a tree 

selectively along the edge can bring 

in a more interesting skyline.” 

Materials 

“Reuse is important to us,” says 

LeBlanc. “We used old bricks found 

on the site for new paving, pathways, 

and an apron. The homeowners 

love collecting driftwood 

and had made a garden arch of 

pieces gathered from the beach. 

They also created a kind of a ground 

cover of driftwood by laying it 

down horizontally so that plants 

can grow through and around it. We 

used reclaimed granite for the paving 

stones, which were once curbs. 

They have variable widths and an 

interesting roughness to them that 

ties into the landscape.” 

bayberry. The parking area is centrally 

located and visible between 

the new guest house and the main 

house. We made a rainwater permeable 

section of gravel, delineated 

by the granite paving stones, 

that morphs into the more flowery 

garden area.” 

Conservation 

“Anything within 100 feet of the resource 

area [a protected area such 

as a marsh or wetland] is in the conservation 

commission’s purview,” 

says LeBlanc. “The commission 

will allow you to do certain things 

if you can prove you’re protecting 

the resource area. In this case, 

we reduced the lawn and managed 

invasives. It helps that in our area 

there are a lot of conservation setbacks, 

because it makes homeowners 

think about native plantings in 

a different way. But we’re not going 

to only do what conservation 

mandates. We’re incorporating the 

concepts into the garden areas next 

to the house as well. That way the 

garden feels more at home in its 

environment, wherever your house 

is located.” 

want it. Is it purely a visual statement? 

Or do they want it for kids 

or dogs to play on? If it were up to 

me, I would avoid lawns, but there 

are different kinds. There’s the 

high-maintenance lawn, where 

the lawn folks come and spray and 

fertilize. And then there’s a native 

mix that’s mowable, and it’s not 

all fescues, so the mow schedule 

Driveways and 

Parking Areas 

“We rerouted the driveway, which 

used to run straight up the hill,” 

says LeBlanc. “So, reestablishing a 

new edge of natives there was important. 

The design zigzags probably 

more than I would normally do 

when laying out a driveway, but our 

clients were adamant that we keep 

all the trees. We designed the new 

driveway to have the strip of rough 

grass down the middle, like you see 

all over Truro. We just let whatever 

grows grow there so that it feels 

like you are driving up a dirt road to 

get to the house through pines and 

A permeable gravel and paver motor court sits next to the perennial garden. (Photo by Neil 

Landino) 

t Marsh from the house, which was designed by Hammer Architects. (Photo by Keith LeBlanc) 

Foraged driftwood creates an arch and low barrier along a walkway. (Photo by Keith 

LeBlanc)

For all your banking needs, 

Cape Cod 5 is here to help. 

kitchens + baths 

interior architecture 

Boston – Provincetown 

dianeburcz.com 

Jared Kuzia, photographer 

DBID Studio by appointment 

617.942.7152 

Reach out to us. 

137 Bradford Street, Provincetown 

Member FDIC 

capecodfive.com | 888-225-4636 

Elegant seaside dining with small town charm. 

Serving creative dishes made with local ingredients seven nights a week. 

Live Music | Entertainment 

Function & Event Space 

5 Beach Rd, East Orleans 

(508) 255 - 0212 

Serving mouth watering brunch and cocktails on our beautiful 

patio every weekend. Right on the way to Nauset Beach.


Thomas Moses works in his North Truro shop. (Photos by Agata Storer) 

A Craftsman Finds the 

Power of Punk in Plywood 

Thomas Moses builds his own riffs on Cape Cod modern design 

By Abraham Storer 

When the Cape Cod Modern 

House Trust was a fledgling 

organization, Thomas 

Moses signed up to advance its mission 

to restore the Outer Cape’s modern 

houses, many of which were in 

the Cape Cod National Seashore and 

falling into disrepair. 

Moses had met the trust’s founding 

director, Peter McMahon, in 2007 

through a mutual friend and, captivated 

by the history of the modern 

houses, began commuting from his 

home in Belmont to barter his carpentry 

skills for the opportunity to 

occasionally stay in one of the houses 

with his wife, Milisa Moses. 

In 2014, Thomas came to Wellfleet 

to work for two weeks on the 

Weidlinger house, renovating it 

during the day and camping out in 

it at night. After a construction crew 

had to move on to another job, a tree 

fell on the roof, and Moses’s commitment 

to the project deepened. His 

two- week sojourn to the Cape has 

now turned into a decade. 

While working on the Weidlinger 

house, Moses spent his nights looking 

for real estate. At the time, a 

small house in Eastham could be 

had for a realistic price, he says. He 

moved out of the job site and Milisa 

joined him. 

For a time, Moses worked for 

and was mentored by craftsman and 

builder Cregg Sweeney of Orleans. In 

2020, he formed his own company, 

Dunehaus, where he merges his carpentry 

skills with a love for modern 

design. 

Many of the projects that Moses 

works on today pay homage to the 

history of modern architecture on the 

Outer Cape. Like many carpenters, 

he does things like interior trim and 

casework, cabinetry, built- ins, and 

restoration. But he’s more likely to be 

using plywood than more traditional 

materials. “I don’t do crown molding,” 

he says. Outer Cape style, he 

says, is above all about simplicity. 

In his shop at Tradesmen’s Park 

in North Truro, Moses points out a 

few samples of his favorite material: 

birch plywood. Whereas plywood is 

commonly used as a support material 

under flooring or in walls, Moses uses 

it as a finish material. On his projects, 

it’s usually the star of the show. 

Behind his workbench, he stores 

his materials and tools in two of his 

creations: a long floating plywood 

box bolted to the wall and a plywood 

desk accented with yellow and gray 

Formica laminate. Moses chooses 

high- quality prefinished plywood 

and typically leaves the edges of the 

plywood exposed rather than covering 

it with trim. The effect is clean, 

unfussy, elegant, and utilitarian. 

In Moses’s Eastham home, another 

of his floating boxes runs the 

length of a wall. Also constructed 

with ¾- inch plywood and featuring 

exposed edges, this box hangs under 

a bay window and hovers about a foot 

off the ground. Its height and width 

are both about 14 inches, making it 

unobtrusive, but its length provides 

continued on page 16 

At a house in Wellfleet, undercounter 

windows offer peeks of the pitch pines 

outside the kitchen.


A Craftsman Finds the Power of Punk in Plywood 


ample storage space for books and 

records. 

In his home office, Moses shows 

off another of his long horizontal 

structures: a wall- to- wall desk, one 

side for himself, the other for Milisa. 

Moses was inspired by a wall- to- wall 

table against a window in the office at 

the Kugel- Gips house — another of 

the houses restored by McMahon — 

which he admired for its continuous, 

strong surface but also its airy and 

open effect. 

Besides seeing its design potential, 

Moses appreciates plywood’s 

durability, seen, for example, in the 

Moses used ¾- inch plywood to create this floating box for storing books and records at his own 

house. (Photos by Agata Storer) 

The plywood kitchen built by Thomas Moses and designed by Anthony Lee for Ira Ziering and 

Godeleine de Rosamel in Wellfleet. 

kitchen at the Kuhn house, now a 

derelict in the Seashore in Wellfleet. 

“The house is rotted from the outside,” 

says Moses, “but it still has a 

beautiful kitchen built with ¾- inch 

plywood.” McMahon’s book, Cape Cod 

Modern, describes how the Kuhns’ architect, 

Nathaniel Saltonstall, “created 

a casually sophisticated cottage by 

mixing rough and refined finishes.” 

For early mid- century architects, 

McMahon says, plywood was an exotic 

material — one they enjoyed experimenting 

with. The industrial design 

duo Charles and Ray Eames were creating 

functional furniture from molded 

plywood in the early 1940s. By the 

late 1940s and early ’50s, when the 

trust’s Breuer and Weidlinger houses 

were built in Wellfleet, plywood had 

become “sort of a fancy material,” 

according to McMahon. Pine was used 

for subfloors and sheathing while plywood 

was reserved for interior paneling, 

exterior siding, and cabinetry. 

Weldtex was the go- to brand of 

plywood, a grooved material that is 

no longer produced. It has proved 

resilient over the years. The Kepes 

house, designed by Marcel Breuer in 

1949, used Weldtex for exterior siding 

and held up until recently when 

it was replaced with marine plywood. 

Weldtex was also used in interiors. 

For one of the trust’s restoration 

projects, McMahon and his team 

sourced some vintage Weldtex from 

a stairwell of what’s now the Harbor 

Stage theater, bartering the material 

for a sheetrock job. 

By the 1950s, plywood had become 

more ubiquitous, and its affordability 

and durability turned it more 

into a structural construction material, 

often hidden under flooring or 

walls. But architects, creative types, 

and design- minded customers have 

continued to favor it as a finish material. 

“It’s like exposed concrete,” Mc- 

Mahon says. “It has a down- market 

hipness.” 

When Moses was developing his 

carpentry skills in the Boston area, 

he was also playing in bands as part 

of the city’s hardcore and punk scene. 

His attraction to the architects of the 

modern houses had to do with their 

originality and anti- establishment 

ethos. 

“These architects were sort of 

punk,” he says. “They were picking 

poor materials to work with and 

experimenting.” 

In a kitchen Moses recently fin-


Chrome yellow Formica provides a warm glow in the kitchen. 

Beveled edges allow Moses’s drawers to be 

opened without hardware. 

ished in Wellfleet, plywood is the 

primary material for cabinets, drawers, 

and surfaces, and although the 

effect is decidedly unpretentious, the 

project is executed with a degree of 

finish and skill more virtuosic than 

punk. 

Moses points out a bank of drawers 

under large windows. For the face 

of the drawers, he worked with two 

sheets of four- by- eight plywood, 

working to align the grain from 

drawer to drawer. A quarter- inch reveal 

separates the drawers — “a clean 

black line, a shadow gap,” says Moses. 

The drawers are beveled on the 

inside so they can be opened without 

any knobs, a detail that adds to the 

room’s minimalist aesthetic. 

Moses worked closely with architect 

Anthony Lee on the kitchen, 

which overlooks Fox Island Marsh 

on Wellfleet’s bayside. “Anthony 

had good drawings with a ton of detail,” 

says Moses. “It’s a super clean 

design. This is the kind of work that I 

like to do.” 

Lee and homeowners Ira Ziering 

and Godeleine de Rosamel chose 

sunny yellow Formica to cover the 

surface of the oversize, panel- ready 

refrigerator and a few other surfaces 

in the kitchen. The yellow along with 

the warm color of the plywood provide 

a radiant glow to the kitchen, especially 

during the late afternoon. 

Ziering purchased the house in 

1995 from Rodney Winfield, an artist 

who built it in the early 1970s in the 

style of Cape Cod’s modern houses. 

Winfield based its airy design on a 

few local houses he admired, pulling 

their plans at the town’s building department 

before getting to work. In 

2011, the house underwent a significant 

upgrade. McMahon, who is also 

an architect, drew the plans, and Nate 

Cook did the construction. 

The original house was built on 

a tight budget. “You couldn’t come 

when it was cold, the windows didn’t 

shut, it was termite- infested and 

damp,” says Ziering. “But it was 

beautiful. The renovations significantly 

improved the quality of the 

house, but Ziering was intentional 

about preserving the unpretentious, 

simple aesthetic and not using “any 

nicer- than- needed materials.” One 

of the features that remained were 

the plywood floors. 

“The old house had plywood 

floors because of economy,” says 

Ziering. “We wanted the floors to pay 

tribute to the original house.” The 

new floor is composed of sheets of 

four- by- eight plywood nailed down 

and painted a subtle beige. 

“The floor gets stained and 

scuffed up and scratched,” he says. 

“But we don’t have to worry about it. 

It makes it more beach house- y.” 

WELLFLEET 

1400 Chequessett Neck Road 

$4,900,000 | | 4 BD 3F 1H BA 3,157 SF 

Set along a secluded stretch of pristine beach in one of 

the most coveted Cape Cod National Seashore areas 

is this privately sited, contemporary post and beam 

home and a two-story guest house with 456 ft of beach 

frontage on Cape Cod Bay. You will be mesmerized by 

the natural beauty of this property’s dunescape and 

woodlands with sweeping views of Cape Cod Bay, Great 

Island, Herring River, and Wellfleet Harbor, which can be 

enjoyed in all seasons from this comfortable beachside 

property. Please call for a private appointment. 

Ashley Fawkes 

Broker Associate 

ashley.fawkes@compass.com 

508.237.1986 

Compass is a licensed real estate broker and Kinlin Grover Realty Group, LLC is a licensed real estate broker 

affiliated with Compass and each abides by Equal Housing Opportunity laws. All material presented herein is 

intended for informational purposes only. Information is compiled from sources deemed reliable but is subject to 

errors, omissions, changes in price, condition, sale, or withdrawal without notice. Photos may be virtually staged 

or digitally enhanced and may not reflect actual property conditions.


Kitchen 

Conundrum 

Small changes with big results 

for when a space doesn’t suit your style 

By Hannah Oakland 

When I was in the market to buy a house on the Outer 

Cape a little over a year ago, I knew I’d have to compromise. 

Along the way, I saw more than my fair 

share of awful kitchens, most of them design time capsules 

with outdated tile and flimsy cabinets. When I finally found 

the house I wanted, one thing I thought was an asset — a 

newly renovated kitchen — turned out to be the opposite. 

I tried to be grateful for the updated kitchen in my 1988 

colonial, even though I recognized that it didn’t fit me stylewise. 

I figured I could live with it and save some renovation 

costs, and guests would even say, “You’re so lucky to have 

this kitchen!” But a few weeks after I moved in, it started to 

get to me. The room was too closed- in and dark. 

Daydreams filled my head — of a breakfast bar for the 

kids, an open floor plan that matched how I like to get together 

with friends, and sunlight at all hours of the day. 

Being an avid DIYer, I grabbed a hammer to see what I 

was working with. I began by removing all the upper cabinets. 

I have an aversion to them: they impose a heaviness I 

don’t think many kitchens can absorb. I prefer open shelving 

instead. To me, if the kitchen is supposed to be the heart 

of the home, it ought to be airy and rhythmic, with an equal 

focus on functionality and flow. 

The goal of this kitchen renovation was simple: add more light. (Photo by Hannah Oakland) 

AFTER 

BEFORE 

Previously, the full kitchen wall kept guests and cook apart. (Photo 

courtesy TK) 

Now, a header provides the support needed to open the space up to the dining area. (Photo by Hannah Oakland) 

Once I removed the drywall to reveal only 

the framing, there was no turning back. The 

light that streamed in was as transformative as 

I’d hoped. I hit a snag, though, when I learned 

that the wall behind the stove was loadbearing. 

Installing a loadbearing beam is not a basic DIY 

project. It can be costly and time- consuming. 

So, I reinforced the existing construction with a 

header (a beam over an opening that carries the 

structural weight) and jack studs, which sit below 

the header for added support on each side. This 

created a picture- frame opening to a breakfast 

nook adjacent to the dining area. It provided the 

openness I wanted without my having to invest 

too much money or work. 

Thanks to a surplus of pantry space along the 

far wall, I was able to use one simple poplar shelf 

sourced from Northern Wild Design in Eastham 

to hold my tableware and be a design accent at 

the same time. I supported the shelf with floating 

brackets plus two ornate brass ones to tie into the 

sink hardware. Then I replaced the dated speckled 

pink laminate countertop with a large- format 

white quartz slab marbled with a warm brown 

from Granite World in Harwich — they also did the 

installation. 

The stark white lower cabinets had a sterile 

vibe, so I rolled them with a Behr cabinet paint, 

Aged Beige, and added antique brass pulls, which 

give the cabinets a rustic farmhouse feel. Then I 

stacked five- inch white ceramic tiles with a reflective, 

slightly wavy surface in a grid pattern that adds 

much more interest than generic flat white ones. 

By making natural light the focus of this kitchen 

makeover and letting that goal guide a few wellchosen 

changes, I was able to avoid the expense of 

a gut renovation and still create a more inviting and 

functional living space for my family and for guests. 

I really am lucky to have this kitchen. 

Open shelving makes for a lighter, more casual feel. (Photo by Hannah Oakland) 

The dining area gets a simple update from furniture with clean modern lines. (Photo by 

Hannah Oakland)

MAZZEO Construction 

Offering design, 

construction, remodeling, 

and handyman services 

on the Outer Cape 

Based in Orleans 

CUSTOM HOMES 

Building your new home or renovating your 

existing space can be stressful. 

SAUNAS & POOLS 

As experienced Cape Cod builders 

we will walk you through every step 

of the process, from start to finish. 

Honesty is our legacy. 

We keep everything transparent, no shortcuts, 

no hidden costs. 

ARCHITECTURAL DETAILING 

Give us a call and let us introduce you to 

our superior craftsmanship 

so we can transform your dreams into reality. 

56 Main St Unit F., Orleans MA 02653 

mazzeoconstructioncc@gmail.com 

508-360-3835

SOL 

CARPENTRY 

building, repairs + maintenance 

solcarpentry.com 

r. todd schwebel 

508-221-7794 

rtschwebel@gmail.com 

Box 618, Truro, MA 02666 

MA Contractor’s Lisc. #88414 

MFM studio 

Interiors / Art 

Visit DRIFT for beautiful and functional wares to enhance 

your coastal home and for New England-made goods and 

objects d’art to enjoy when you’re away from the sea. 

361 Main Street, Wellfleet, MA 02667 

www.driftwellfleet.com 

Seasonal hours and new items via Instagram @DRIFTwellfleet 

427 Commercial St 

Provincetown 

Open 11 am – 4 pm 

Thursday – Monday 

or by appointment 

508-364-1272 

Featuring work by M.DelVisco 

mdv3@comcast.net 

Consistently 

bringing distinction 

and elegance to 

residential interiors and exteriors 

to our customers and yours. 

Your One-Stop Source for Everything to Build With! 

DESIGN SHOWROOM | LUMBERYARD | CONTRACTOR DIVISION | HARDWARE | RENTALS | BENJAMIN MOORE | ANDERSEN DOORS & WINDOWS | FLOORING 

26 BOWDOIN ROAD | MASHPEE, MA | 508-477-3132 | VISIT BOTELLOLUMBER.COM


On a Former Gravel Pit, 

a Healing Garden Grows 

By Dorothea Samaha 

Fiona Mulligan is wearing a shirt 

that she hand- dyed using indigo 

she grew herself. The color is 

a dusty purple- blue that stands out 

against her deeply suntanned skin. 

Mulligan, who designs edible landscapes 

for others, tends her own in 

Eastham. She spends as many hours 

as she possibly can in her garden. 

“I’m not always doing work,” says 

Mulligan. “I like to watch the bugs.” 

Hers is a no- spray operation — 

not even the organic stuff. She trusts 

that the beneficial insects will devour 

the harmful ones. On one side of her 

land, a froth of flowering greenery is 

crawling with tiny black- and- orange 

bodies. 

“This was a celery plant that went 

to flower,” says Mulligan. She plunges 

a hand fearlessly into the mess. 

“All of these bugs here are called soldier 

beetles. Their larvae will eat the 

larva of pests.” 

It’s also a no- till operation. Mulligan 

walks barefoot down her swale 

walkways, careful not to tread on the 

dirt beds where her plants grow. “One 

step can hold a lot of pounds per inch,” 

she says. To make the beds, Mulligan 

broadforks them only once. They’re 

never compacted again. “That way,” 

says Mulligan, “the plants are able to 

root very deeply without struggle.” 

By mid- August, her eggplants and 

tomatoes have grown tall. 

Compacted soil causes all kinds of 

issues, says Mulligan: erosion, poor 

water retention, nutrient deficiencies. 

She’s protective of her painstakingly 

maintained loose dirt. The 

idea of people wandering around her 

garden, reckless and unsupervised, 

she says, “would be like if someone 

walked in and just took my boyfriend’s 

surfboards off the wall and 

started using them.” 

Her plants, which easily reach the 

deepest dirt, have good immune systems. 

At the end of the year, she cuts 

everything flat or pulls it up. In the 

spring, she adds a layer of compost on 

top. “That’s it,” she says. “It’s ready 

for the season.” 

Mulligan grows all the vegetables 

she might need for dinner: 

carrots and garlic, cucumbers and 

eggplants, peppers and tomatoes and 

beans. She also grows the ingredients 

for her tinctures, soaps, and salves, 

the things she sells labeled Healing 

Hands Apothecary. 

For her soaps she dries calendula, 

rose, evergreens, and lavender. In the 

rental cottage in Eastham she calls 

her herbal studio, she’ll grind the 

leaves or flowers into a powder, then 

pour it into the soap in the making. 

The result after one to two months of 

curing: speckled rectangles, colored 

blush, yellow, gray- green, and white, 

scented with essential oils, and ready 

to sell. The top of each soap is decorated 

with dried flowers, hinting at 

the scents within. 

She makes witch hazel products 

from her own hamamelis. There’s an 

arnica salve that incorporates cayenne, 

comfrey, and ginger for muscle 

pain. A glass jar, glowing in the lateafternoon 

light, contains a concoction 

for the face: cold- pressed apricot 

kernel oil and rosehip oil, infused for 

up to six months with other plants 

Mulligan has grown and dried. The 

blend, she says, will change based on 

what’s growing when she’s mixing 

her products. 

Mulligan, is certified in advanced 

clinical herbalism — a designation 

she earned through the American 

Herbalist Guild. But she says she’s 

grown weary of how trendy herbalism 

can be. 

Mulligan’s multipurpose calendula: it decorates her handmade soaps, 

is brewed in oil for her tinctures, and looks beautiful in her garden. 

A glass jar contains a concoction for the face: cold- pressed apricot kernel oil 

and rosehip oil, infused with a variety of helpful plants Mulligan has grown. 

Fiona Mulligan’s handmade soaps are scented with essential oils and decorated with herbs and 

flowers from her own expansive garden. (Photos by Agata Storer) 

“A lot of the information out 

there has been scaring me,” she 

says. “People think what they’re doing 

is safe just because they’re using 

plants.” She doesn’t sell her herbs as 

medicines, she says. “I don’t want 

someone taking a willow tincture 

just because they heard it’s good for 

something.” 

Mulligan grew up in Rutherford, 

N.J., then farther west, in the town 

of Harmony. At 18, she moved to England 

to attend Newcastle- Upon- 

Tyne University, where she studied 

nutrition. There she had a realization, 

she says: “Eating and growing 

much of your own food and living 

a life close to the land is one of the 

most timeless ways to be happy and 

healthy.” She pursued that idea on 

stays in India and on travels in Ireland, 

Peru, Puerto Rico, and Ecuador. 

In each place she found herself 

studying village farms and exploring 

herbalism. In India, she said, “I 

Mulligan gathers comfrey in her no- till garden. 

was tilling fields with horses at one 

point.” 

Back in the U.S. and looking for a 

place to farm, she followed the advice 

of a friend who lives in Brewster and 

moved to the Cape, where she met her 

boyfriend, Matt Rivers. He hired her 

to work on the land behind the house 

where they now live. “He wanted a 

vegetable garden,” says Mulligan. 

She decided the garden should be 

bigger. Now it stretches to something 

like 100 feet long. 

For her birthday last year, Rivers 

bought her arched trellises, which 

frame the entrances to the garden. 

Climbing up one of them is a schisandra 

vine, a plant native to the forests 

of northern China, the Russian 

Far East, and Korea. Also called the 

five- flavor berry, it’s considered 

an adaptogen: a plant that helps the 

body to respond to stress. 

Tucked beside the trellis are 

three varieties — Krishna, Vana, and 

Kapoor — of tulsi, which is native 

to tropical and subtropical regions 

of Australia, Malesia, Asia, and the 

western Pacific. Mulligan doesn’t include 

tulsi in the products she sells 

— the plant is sacred in India, she 

says, so she doesn’t want to monetize 

it. “The leaves are fun to crunch 

and smell,” she says, handing over a 

sprig. Vana tulsi, especially, is enticingly 

aromatic; it smells like a blend 

of clove and cinnamon in a strong, 

warm tea. 

She moved to Eastham for 

her relationship, she says, but she 

wouldn’t have ended up on a farm in 

Maine, like the one some friends of 

hers just bought. “I need to be close 

to the ocean,” says Mulligan, even 

though it means farming only a very 

small space. 

“I always envisioned 50 acres for 

myself,” says Mulligan. “I’d love to 

have cows and pigs and chickens.” On 

the other side of the property, there’s 

a little orchard — “not ideal,” says 

Mulligan. “Long story.” The soil is 

sandy and prone to erosion, she says, 

since the whole property used to belong 

to Brewster Sand & Gravel. 

But Mulligan grows what she can. 

“The hazelnuts are actually pretty big 

and fat right now,” she says.

THE COASTAL COMPANIES 

Cape Cod’s Premier Beach House Design Build Firm 

• Custom Builders 

• Renovations 

• Additions 

• Kitchen & Bath 

Remodeling 

• Pools & Landscape 

buildwithcoastal.com 

Contact us at 508-240-2114 

info@buildwithcoastal.com 

coastallanddesign 

the_coastal_companies

Andersen: Windows that look good when the weather doesn’t. 

“Andersen” and all other marks where denoted are trademarks of Andersen Corporation. 

©2023 Andersen Corporation. All rights reserved. 

HINCKLEY 

HOME & DESIGN CENTER 

138 Route 137 ♦ Harwich, MA 

508.432.8014 www.hinckleyhomecenter.com 

♦ 

“family owned since 1872” 

VINEYARD 

HOME & DESIGN CENTER 

454 State Road ♦ Vineyard Haven, MA 

508.693.3227 ♦ www.vineyardhomecenter.com 

Pam Can Help You Create Your Own Original Masterpiece 

Pam Boyle 

Designer

Together, we can help 

everyone on their 

path to a home… 

Donate to the Wellfleet Housing Trust today. 

Day | Logan Group 

daylogangroup@compass.com 

Support Local, 

Support Housing, 

Support the Community. 

Kait Logan 

REALTOR ® 

kaitlogan@compass.com 

M: 845.532.3864 

Katy Day 

REALTOR ® 

katy.day@compass.com 

M: 313.478.0414 

2548 Route 6 • Wellfleet, MA 02667 • compass.com 

Compass is a licensed real estate broker and abides by Equal Housing Opportunity laws. All material presented herein is intended for informational purposes only. This is not intended to solicit property already listed. Nothing herein shall be construed as legal, accounting or other 

professional advice outside the realm of real estate brokerage.

Beach/House, Fall 2024

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template ?