You don’t have to embark on a gut renovation to completely reconceive a home. One key decision can work wonders. Case in point: a Rehoboth Beach second-home project that designer Regan Billingsley took on in 2021. While she refers to her redesign of most of the rooms as a “cosmetic upgrade,” one major undertaking—closing off the porch to add to the interior living space—proved to be transformative.
Billingsley grew up spending summers in Rehoboth, and after she launched her eponymous firm more than a decade ago, she designed show houses for the Village Improvement Association—so she knows the lay of the land. But this commission was her first full-house project here. The clients initially came to her through word of mouth; she had designed their primary home in Maryland. When the pandemic hit, the clients traded in their Rehoboth condo for this shingled 3,500-square-foot house, built in the 1990s and located four blocks from the beach.
In addition to home’s primary occupants—a family of six, plus two dogs—extended family also enjoys the five-bedroom home. “There are many people at the house at all times,” Billingsley notes, so more elbow room was needed. That porch space had to be better utilized.
“It was a challenge,” Billingsley recalls, “because when we closed the porch, we ended up with a fairly large room that had many different angles, and we had to find space that every family member wanted.” But the uniquely shaped great room not only succeeded in accommodating functional areas (a window seat here, a reading nook there) but it also managed to give the home an original look—the opposite of a cookie-cutter beach house. “[The clients] didn’t want it to look kitschy or expected,” says Billingsley, who worked on the expansion with Coastal Carpentry, a contracting firm in Berlin, Maryland, recommended by the homeowners.
“The porch had a flat ceiling, but it had an angled roof,” the designer recalls. “So we brought the ceiling up because we wanted to add some height to the space. There was nothing that we could do to the ceilings on the rest of the main floor because of second floor on top, but we saw the porch as an opportunity to bump up the ceiling, add some height, and introduce some additional light. You see a ton of windows and angled ceilings to bring in as much air flow and light and visual space as possible.”
The choice was inspired because now the eye is coaxed up past the shiplap walls to the irregular ceiling, with its distressed oak beams and minimalist bronze chandelier, a brass ring by Visual Comfort (formerly Circa Lighting) that seems to float. The floors are white oak, and the modular Restoration Hardware sofa is covered in the brand’s Perennial fabric. Billingsley collaborated with Coastal Carpentry on the TV and cubbyhole unit, with the cubbies backed by a brightly patterned Maresca wallpaper.
Semiprivate moments occur throughout. The inviting window seat that Billingsley custom designed is a place “where you can plop down and read a book, take your flip-flops on and off, and it also has storage,” she explains. “It was a way to utilize a blank wall and turn it into a livable space.” Similarly, an irregularly angled corner, tucked under a beam, is home to a plush chaise lounge (from Cisco Home, with fabric by Holly Hunt) and offers a degree of privacy.
“We’re in this huge space with many different angles,” Billingsley says, “so what I saw were opportunities for each family member to hang out with the family but have their own space as well. There’s a purpose to every little nook and area within the larger great room.”
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