Early Summer 2017 Cape Cod HOME | capecodlife.com

Living the sweet life in Chatham

Cape Cod Home  /  Early Summer 2017 /

Writer: Haley Cote / Photographer: Brian Vanden Brink 

Living the sweet life in Chatham

Early Summer 2017 Cape Cod HOME | capecodlife.com

Cape Cod Home  /  Early Summer 2017 /

Writer: Haley Cote / Photographer: Brian Vanden Brink 

Living the Sweet Life, Early Summer 2017 Cape Cod HOME | capecodlife.com

A charming arched entry porch provides a peaceful retreat and an inviting welcome. Photo by Brian Vanden Brink

Beyond the kitchen, two sets of French doors flanking the living room fireplace open out to the backyard—complete with a deck, terrace and outdoor grill. Curved lines and circular forms, like those of the arched entry porch, define this outdoor living space. The uphill site was ultimately an advantage for the landscape design team at Hawk Design Inc., as it allowed more opportunities to add visual interest, says company president David Hawk. “When you have topography,” Hawk says, “you can really do many more interesting things than you can when you have a flat site.”

Designing the outdoor grill space, located off of the wraparound porch, was one such opportunity to create visual interest. “We decided to conveniently place the grill on top of the stone retaining wall so that it flowed with this meandering seating wall that wraps around the terrace space off of the deck,” Hawk says. “Instead of making it a destination kitchen and setting the grill out by itself, why not make use of that retaining wall, which reinforces the circular forms of the backyard.” Using quintessential Cape Cod plantings like boxwood, hydrangeas, roses, rose of Sharon and hibiscus, the team embellished the space, looking to create an “impact” landscape. Hawk explains, “As opposed to putting down small plants that would almost make the house look bigger, we brought in plants that are more mature and put the house in a more permanent setting right off the bat, instead of waiting years for them to grow and have the desired impact.”

Hawk Design also utilized a stone retaining wall to achieve level space with the sloped front yard. “This needed to be an informal wall that still had some finish to it so it would react nicely to the casual feel of the site and the undulating landscape,” Hawk says, noting that the use of irregular-shaped native stones helps achieve that. The wall borders the house’s side entry—which faces the driveway and leads into a mudroom—and stops just short of the front entry. “We could’ve wrapped that retaining wall around to the street side,” Hawk says, “but we felt that would look too built-in. That’s why we went with the aged granite monolithic steps that meander up the slope to create a more traditional entry and a softer entry to the front door from the street.”

Since the land rises up at the back of the house, PSD chose to nestle the freestanding garage into the hill. Architecturally, DaSilva says the garage is “a miniature version of the house,” with its overhangs and steep roof. The second level of the garage provides the ultimate kids’ sanctuary in the form of a playroom. With no stairway inside the garage, the only way to get to that playroom is by going up behind the hill and entering through a set of French doors found right off of the grade.

To the client, DaSilva says “the sweet life” meant a life near both beach and town in Chatham, and La Dolce Vita was the realization of their dream to live in the quaint seaside town. “We try to create homes that people get emotionally attached to, that they long to return to,” DaSilva says. “This is their getaway, their place to relax, and their place to have fun. They’re entering a storybook world, in a way, when they come here. Their house can reflect that, and I hope this house does.”

Haley Cote

Haley Cote is the assistant editor for Cape Cod Life Publications. A lifelong Cape Cod resident, Haley is an alumna of Barnstable High School and Cape Cod Community College. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Suffolk University. When she’s not writing, this self-described “pop culture junkie” also loves discovering new music and catching up on the “Real Housewives.”