You can’t tell from the road what lies behind the wall of windows above the gentle slope of Seaside Cemetery on Route 131 in Tenants Harbor. Two up, seven across, tightly spaced, and framed in a deep blood red, the rickety, single pane windows are “iconic,” in homeowner Joline Godfrey’s words. For anyone familiar with that stretch of road, it’s true: your eyes can’t help but ping to the reflective panes, making us instant, if unsatisfied, voyeurs.
When Godfrey purchased the home in 2016, ”the whole thing was terrifying. It was a very dangerous place,” she said.
This big space, added in 1989 to the original 1929 structure, was uninsulated and contained a jumble of different floors with ramps running in between, an unstable winding steel staircase and so many gaps between the floorboards that you could see from the top level into the cellar. There was a small woodstove perched on a stone, but otherwise the floor was dirt and a large heat sink had been dug out in the middle.
Elsewhere in the home a stack of oil cans served as a chimney for another stove. “Why this place didn’t burn down, I’ll never know!” Godfrey said with a laugh.
Clearly the home needed some work, but to change that wall of windows would be too much. “I finally decided that would just be too unsettling,” she said. “I wasn’t going to do that in this town where change is so anathema.” As a born and bred Mainer, she is sensitive to what it means to have and maintain these quirky local landmarks.
Instead, said she “decided to make it warmer, but not change it dramatically.” So in 2018 she began updating the house with the help of architect Eric Allyn and builder Mike Catalano, and she moved in the following year. Godfrey, a financial education expert who runs her own business, has been slowly settling in since and made the permanent move from Ojai, California, as of this spring.
One of the biggest challenges of the addition is the odd angle it sits at. It was inexplicably stuck on askew, both at its initial junction at a landing off the original kitchen, and there’s a second jag as you descend from the landing into the main space. Instead of 90-degree intersections, walls swing out at greater degrees and join at narrower angles.
There’s a natural desire to try to rectify this in one’s mind, to straighten out what’s unusually “off,” and it takes someone with verve and a creative eye, like Godfrey, to temper all the diagonals. She’s made it into a welcoming, warm space by filling it with art and natural materials. Every surface and nook is occupied by artwork or objets d’art — increasingly so as Godfrey incorporates her collection from her California home.
Godfrey is a natural and prolific relationship builder, and she often hosts dinner parties and other gatherings in this room. The space is conducive to storytelling — its objects and vignettes are already telling quiet stories — and Godfrey boosts community and connectivity here through all kinds of formal and informal get togethers.
“If you want community to work, you have to be engaged in the community,” she said. It helps that her house, and this room in particular, already draw people in.
But perhaps it’s not a coincidence that Godfrey chose a house so intriguing in the first place.