Captured by the View

Interior Designer Tracy Davis Highlights the Pleasures
of Coastal Living in Cape Elizabeth, Maine

Written by Ashley Gartland
Photograph by Darren Setlow

When one of Tracy Davis’s frequent clients requested her assistance remodeling a home in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, the East Coast–based interior designer anticipated working on a relatively simple redesign of an existing ranch-style home. But when she saw the coastal residence in person, Davis realized that a remodel couldn’t fix the old home’s flawed design or repurpose the structure into one that did justice to the setting’s stunning coastal views.

So Davis, who owns the design firm Urban Dwellings, quickly adapted the original plan. First, she made arrangements for the old ranch-style home to be torn down. Then she worked from the ground up to create a customized home that beautifully blends private and public spaces while capturing the charms of coastal living year-round.

Davis and her firm have been praised for designing customized spaces that focus on location, functionality, and style. In this home, she tapped her talents to create a home that’s organized around a series of half floors, which provide separation between the home’s elegant entertaining areas and the lived-in private spaces, such as the bedrooms and home office. The unique layout encourages a constant flow of movement that allows the family and their guests to travel through the core of the home with ease.

On the lowest level, Davis arranged for a bedroom for each of the homeowner’s three active children. Those bedrooms sit just below the floor that houses the home’s public spaces. Rooms designed for socializing, such as the well-appointed kitchen and open living room, are thus easily accessed by the children and their mother, who resides on the next floor up. To give the homeowner as much privacy as possible, Davis created two top-floor retreats: an office hideaway, and a master suite outfitted with custom shutters and millwork, a decidedly feminine bathroom, a private laundry room, and a dressing area.

Davis might have wrapped up the project with pride there but, given the home’s coastal location, she instead sought ways to highlight the surrounding scenery. She succeeded in bringing the outdoors into the home by creating vantage points throughout the space, such as a top-floor office that mimics the feeling of sitting in the bow or stern of a boat. Additionally, she made the homeowner’s request for outdoor entertaining spaces a top priority.

In the yard surrounding the home, Davis planned for a series of gathering spaces where the homeowner could entertain guests or merely unwind alone while watching her kids play. In the front yard, an intimate garden terrace provides space to serve drinks, snacks, or even a light lunch. Elsewhere in the nicely landscaped yard, a collection of oversized teak chairs beckons guests to gather around a fire pit for conversation after dark.

Enticing as these spaces are, the most important outdoor area on the property may very well be the large deck, where Davis arranged groupings of teak and cast aluminum furniture to create an outdoor living room and dining area just beyond the house. “The deck was a big part of this house because the homeowner and her children are summer people and boaters and are very active,” says Davis. “The outdoor deck was also important because they are social people and like to entertain, so it provides a place to have cocktails, too.”

Back inside the home, Davis found additional ways to make the scenery pop by using soft, muted colors. Coupled with a selection of high-end finishes, the color scheme serves as an ideal canvas for the views. Each carefully selected shade and finish plays well with the ever-changing natural light that filters through the home.

“My vision for the color scheme and finishes in this home was generally something that was reflective of the views,” says Davis. “And I didn’t want the colors in the room to compete with what you were looking at outside since this home offers a piece of moving, living art outside the windows year-round.”

Although the finished home is certainly stunning in its own right, the designer maintains that those captivating views play an equally large role in creating an incredible year-round living experience. “This is a place where you can watch the waves crash and enjoy a view that changes every day. Then you have these spectacular sunrises and sunsets,” she says. “It’s a great performance act.”

[Source: Gartland, Ashley. "Captured by the View" Home By Design. June-July 2012. Web. 24 July 2012.]