Interior designer Kelley Gable knows Rehoboth (she lives there, as well as in Severna Park, Maryland), and the building community knows she knows it. So, when a couple came to CRx Construction for a remodel job in town, the company reached out to Gable.
The extended team (which also included DC Exteriors and Renovation) and their clients collaborated on the 2,500-square-foot home, redoing both the exterior and some key interior spaces. It’s an intergenerational space, with Gable’s clients having inherited the house from one of their fathers, who lives with the couple. Dad was amenable to anything, giving the couple free rein to do a redesign. (Of course, the clients were respectful of Dad’s lifestyle, first and foremost his bedroom with a view of the pond.)
Thus, the façade’s gingerbread look was transformed into a fresh-looking coastal farmhouse. “It’s all white, with the board and batten,” Gable explains. “Mixing in the shingle detailing achieved the farmhouse aesthetic with a coastal nod.” The board-and-batten millwork occurs both inside and out for a seamless look. “I love bringing outside materials into the home and having a consistent flow throughout,” she says.
Inside, Gable reimagined the kitchen, the family room and the den—which now functions as the beach prep room. (New flooring, paint and lighting were also added throughout the entire home.) Before Gable became involved, the interior was choppy, with a tiny kitchen. “We completely tore up the whole thing and opened up the entire space,” she says. In came Shaker-style overlay cabinets in white and a deep-blue island for a coastal vibe. “Then we added what I think is the focal point of the kitchen, which is the accordion-style sliding glass door,” the designer says. She also added a screened-in porch accessed by the accordion door, a back deck and an outdoor shower—in true Rehoboth style.
Clearly, the home called for beach-style livability, as evidenced by the choice in flooring. “On the first floor, we did a luxury vinyl plank (LVP)—really light-colored, almost a natural oak esthetic,” Gable explains. “They wanted durability—they knew there would be a lot of wear-and-tear on the floors. They have a dog and it’s at the beach. They wanted something that could handle high traffic. It’s a high-level LVP; they didn’t want to sacrifice quality. They wanted something that looked like it had a natural grain texture. In fact, many people, when they’ve seen this project, thought it was natural wood.” Upstairs, they installed all new carpeting—“something high-performance with a really nice aesthetic,” Gable says.
Though the house’s structure and square footage remained unchanged, “It feels 10 times bigger,” she says. “We brought in so much natural light with the accordion door.” If Gable keeps emphasizing that one crucial change, it is because it was essential to creating an indoor-outdoor lifestyle, perfect for entertaining: “That was a big selling point.”
