Come on, guys.
[music playing]
I'm looking for another one for you.
I got one.
Here we go, guys.
All right.
[chatter]
A beach cottage, for me, really, is a place to be
of the sand and of the water.
You know, putting your feet in the sand
and walking along the beach is very calming
and really kind of brings you down and relaxes.
We arrive at the deck, and then the whole world opens up.
[music playing]
You see all the cliffs in Chilmark.
You have Menemsha Harbor.
We have the Elizabeth Islands.
We have Cuttyhunk in the very end over there.
It's like the best of, you know, beach
living and cottage living.
Welcome to Flip Flop.
These two shacks that we were able to acquire
were about 1,600 square feet between the two cottages.
We're on the island of Martha's Vineyard,
in a particular area called Aquinnah, and home
of the Wampanoag Indians.
Martha's Vineyard is really unique.
And it has to do with the glaciers and how things got
formed.
We have woods.
And we have all kinds of ponds.
So you can explore.
And you can go to different places.
Get out in the boat.
Go pick up the fish or whatever at the fish market right
off the dock, in the boat, as opposed to driving around.
I would always tell my kids about my youth
and growing up in Long Island, New York,
and spending many, many summers in Montauk in a beach shack
and camping out.
My daughter, Taylor, and her mother
were on me for a while about, gee, Dad,
I'd love to have that kind of experience again.
And I ultimately said to them, look,
if you can find a beach shack that
meets that criteria, go ahead.
And then they did.
MARSHA AHEARN: I got Taylor on board.
Before we ever got into the house,
we were looking through the door while the broker
was looking for the right key.
And we're like, this is it.
We were just locking eyes.
We knew this was it-- that view.
I look out on that, and, like, my blood pressure just drops.
It just has such an impact on me.
It was my absolute dream.
And I can't believe we found a way to make it happen.
And it was great to find something that we could afford.
And then he said, well, you're going to have
to live with it the way it is.
But we knew.
Taylor, didn't we know?
We knew.
There was no way Patrick was going to leave it untouched.
PATRICK AHEARN: I'm an architect.
I really thought of my wife and my daughter
very much like the client.
My job was to establish the architecture and the theme.
My wife did all the interior decorating.
Virtually all the pieces that you see here
came from an antique fair.
She has a gift for really putting
things together that you might not think make any sense.
She really brings that to the table in a nice way.
So the main cottage has two ensuite bedrooms and a loft
bedroom up above, with a separate full bathroom that
really serves as a powder room.
We're able to create this wonderful outdoor deck area.
And the second cottage is a one-bedroom cottage
with a separate kitchen.
So this is the primary space within the cottage.
The use of the mahogany countertop
was really meant to tie the idea of a nautical or a boat
environment to the cottage.
Everybody hangs out either on the island--
people are cooking.
People are cutting things.
So this gets very busy as a space.
At the same time, there may be a game on the TV,
and people are coming in and out from the beach.
So this is really kind of the central part of the activity
as we're preparing meals and things like that.
How about an oyster?
You want an oyster?
You want to help shuck the oysters?
Go have an oyster.
PATRICK AHEARN: This ladder is very nautically
inspired, very much like you'd be stepping
off an old sailing vessel.
And it's the only way up to the loft.
So when we brought the furniture up there,
it was a little tricky.
We had to take some of the railings
off to get the furniture up.
And hopefully, it'll never have to come down.
So the former owner used this space as his office.
And so we really felt this would be a VIP bedroom space.
This loft floats between the kitchen
and the primary living space.
But what I like about it is you can look down.
You can talk to people down there.
But I can look right out the skylight.
And I'm looking right at our boat
and, also, people on the beach.
In the morning, and you want to see the sunrise,
you just open up the shutter.
And there you are.
[music playing]
And what we were able to do and really significantly change
how it lives is to add this new floor-to-ceiling glass set of
doors, which totally fold away.
One of the other things that's special about this beach
house compared to, say, the Outer Banks,
and things like that, where the houses are up
on a different level, is that we basically
can walk right out of the house to the deck
and down to the beach.
The notion of Flip Flop--
take your flip-flops off.
Go into the sand.
I put myself through college.
I spent a whole semester-plus living in my Volkswagen bus.
It's actually a beverage cooler.
That we'll drag down to the beach.
And it's kind of a fun thing to use.
[music playing]
So you step down from the living room space,
if you will, to this dining pavilion.
And then you step down again to the more
private bedroom chambers.
To the right is the primary bedroom and private bath,
which has a cathedral ceiling, as well.
So we kind of took that-- what was like a quasi-attic--
added the fan.
We have the high windows above the bed.
And then the powder room--
bathroom that also serves the loft-- that's a full bath--
is over to the left.
Going down the hallway that we created
to the new bedroom space.
We brought in some old timbers, and we kept
them just the way they are.
And we just painted them.
Follow the Yellow Brick Road-type thing.
So welcome to the little shack.
Now, the little cottage was much more
of a total gut, gut, gut everything
because it really was a plywood box.
It's very much self-contained.
For example, somebody could come here and never
even go into the main house and really have
a great weekend experience.
Well, we've got a very nice full kitchen here.
We've got the bedroom.
So one of the other things that we did to help reinforce
the notion of cottages, which was oftentimes done
in the old days, when there was not air conditioning,
was to have interior windows between interior spaces.
So this idea that the windows open
between this space and the bedroom, I think,
is really a nice little touch.
This is a good one.
These are all really good.
Yeah.
[inaudible].
Want to do it on my lap?
There we go.
[inaudible].
Team effort.
MARSHA AHEARN: It's just the perfect getaway.
And now that my kids are all grown up,
creating families of their own, it's just wonderful
when they come back here.
PATRICK AHEARN: Having this beach house and what
we do with family and friends and gathering
and see the grandkids grow up-- my son
got married on this beach last October.
And my daughter, Taylor, is going to get
married up here next year.
Those are memories that will last forever.
I mean, these things are really things that make me feel
good about life in general.
[music playing]