1980s House Reborn

The Shelter Island Remodel reimagines a sprawling 1980s waterfront home whose piecemeal additions left it structurally compromised and ill-suited to contemporary life. A full tear-down would have been wasteful, while a new house would have been limited in size by zoning. Instead, the renovation extends the home’s life, transforming it into a sustainable, resilient, and family-centered retreat designed to serve multiple generations well into the future.

The project begins with the fundamentals: strengthening structure, upgrading insulation, and improving building systems to withstand the increasing severity of coastal storms and the long-term challenges of climate change. These invisible layers create a quieter, more efficient, and longer-lasting home. At the same time, the design reorganizes interior circulation, bringing clarity and openness. The kitchen becomes the true center of the home, now directly linked to a new north-side patio and pool. A corridor with an open-riser stair reinforces a dramatic land-to-water axis, while discreetly housing storage for the gear of island living.

The failing enclosed pool room is reborn as a light-filled screen porch, fitted with large operable panels that dissolve the boundary between indoors and out. This flexible space hosts ping-pong games, family meals, or quiet afternoons with equal ease, always connected to breezes and changing light.

Inside, material choices create a balance of warmth and vibrancy. White oak detailing unifies living spaces with crafted precision, while a palette of colorful tiles and fabrics adds texture and personality, celebrating the energy of family life. A new brise-soleil tempers summer sun, draws in low winter light, and deepens the connection to the surrounding landscape. Together, these interventions modernize and humanize the house, extending its life another fifty years or more. The remodel demonstrates a sustainable alternative to demolition—one that embraces place, family, and resilience on the shoreline.

Shelter Island, NY

2025

AIA Long Island Archi Award 2025

AIA Brooklyn AIA Award 2025

AIA New York Residential Interiors Selection 2025

A New Front Door

The new front door (left), is situated between a reduced with garage and new kitchen, creates a strong new corridor through the house that features ample house storage and a strong visual connection to the water through an open riser stair and windows in the sitting room. The old front door (right) becomes a light giver and access to a nearby existing family pool.

 

A New Place to Gather

The kitchen is re-conceived around the existing large skylight, which had been compromised by a suspended vent hood over the former island. The plan is re-oriented to extend toward the rear of the house—where daily life naturally gravitates, toward the water. A new interior window aligns with the kitchen’s sloped ceiling, establishing visual and spatial continuity with the living room and adjacent stair (not pictured).

The design of finishes and cabinetry builds on the original house’s board-and-batten vocabulary, translating it into a series of alternating planes, frames, and expressed joints that introduce depth and subtle relief within the interior. Carefully calibrated sightlines are established at key moments, allowing light to travel through the house and reinforcing visual connections to family activity across rooms and levels.

The dining room functions as an active corridor for both daily movement and shared meals. New structural framing opens the space to the kitchen, living room, and views toward the water. Fully operable windows support a range of natural ventilation strategies. Given the limited ceiling height, board-and-batten and shallow coffered elements are employed to articulate the ceiling plane while helping to temper sound and reduce reverberation within the room.

 

Sun Room With A View

The sun room is a new structure built atop a former plunge pool. Conceived as a glazed screen porch, the space is filled with natural light and maintains a strong visual connection to the water. Exposed joists integrate concealed lighting, while a pair of discreet skylights are carefully positioned to capture afternoon and evening light.

While most windows are operable, the corners are designed as fixed openings to open the sun room out toward the water as much as possible. This is facilitated by pulling the structure back from the corners.

 

A Living Room and Buttress

The living room was rebuilt from the face of the exterior wall inward. Structural reinforcement was introduced throughout, including a new steel “buttress” along the south elevation that functions both as a brise-soleil and as a lateral structural brace for ever-stronger weather on the east coast. Discrete fields of vertically ship-lapped oak reframe the former front door as a patio opening and mark the locations of the two interior stairways leading to the upper sleeping floors. A finely detailed picket railing strengthens visual connections to the water, while the existing fireplace was reconstructed and reclad in Heath Ceramics sculptural tile, dark gray granite, and integrated wood detailing, unifying the material language of the house.

Detail + Material

Wood detailing and tile is used to introduce pattern, texture, and color throughout the house. A powder room displays rich mustard and green tiles, set off by an orange cast concrete sink and yellow faucet. A guest bathroom features an array of blue tile shades contrasted by reclaimed heart pine millwork vanities and closets.

Wood detailing emphasizes contrasting fields of wood with delicate lines of light and shadow.

 

A New Face

The waterside façade was largely rebuilt at the ground floor, while the second floor was repaired, repainted, and selectively re-clad where deteriorated boards were present. All windows and doors were replaced, and in most instances the façade was opened to increase daylight, views, and natural ventilation. A new steel buttress extends across approximately 75 percent of the house, creating layered zones of shading that allow the home to be comfortably occupied later into the day. These include retractable shade cloths integrated into the structure (left and center). The buttress also forms the primary structural frame for the sun room at the east end (right).

 

The existing plan was confused and did not reflect the manner by which the multi-generational family desired to use the home.

The new plan creates a new entrance, an updated kitchen and dining area and sun room for year round enjoyment of the vistas toward the water.