The first thing you notice upon arriving at Julie and Scott Pelletier’s house outside Portland, Maine, is what you don’t see: a front door. There isn’t one. Which doesn’t mean you can’t figure out how to enter.

You steer up a steep wooded driveway, park, and then ascend via granite slab steps to a slim patio and breezeway that connect the three gabled structures that make up the dwelling. The breezeway offers a game show option: Door Number 1, Door Number 2, or Door Number 3, all of them glass with broad black aluminum frames. Take your pick.

There’s no doorbell or knocker, but sight lines make it clear that the single-level volume off to the left is probably the main house. You enter through a mudroom that opens into a 600-square-foot kitchen and large living/dining area. An opening leads to the second structure, which contains four modestly sized bedrooms off a central hallway.

The other two breezeway doors lead to the two-story garage, which has an upstairs “flex” room and a downstairs parking area closed in by a grid of black aluminum and frosted glass doors. All the rooms (and many of their vaulted ceilings) are strikingly clad with four-by-eight-foot sheets of birch plywood.

That the Pelletiers chose to build a house at all was a bit serendipitous. Emergency room physicians, the two lived in South Portland while doing their residencies, from 2010 to 2013. At the time, Rob Barrett—now owner of design-build firm Barrett Made—was their landlord and upstairs neighbor. After a stint working in Hawaii, the Pelletiers returned to Maine in 2016, but they couldn’t find what they hoped for in Portland’s tight housing market. When they asked Barrett, by now a friend, to evaluate their options, he suggested new construction and even helped the couple find the site, atop a ridge in nearby Cape Elizabeth.

“The house is designed to change with the family’s needs and weather with the elements.”
—Matthew Ahlberg, architect

Around the same time, Scott’s uncle, a graphic designer, sent him an email with images of Vega Cottage, a contemporary Norwegian home by Kolman Boye Architects on a rocky outcrop south of the Arctic Circle. “If I was going to build a house, this would be my jumping-off point,” Scott remembers thinking, impressed by the simple, elegant volumes and oversize picture windows that framed the dramatic surroundings. “It was like a dream—it didn’t look like anything I had seen anyone build in the United States,” Julie adds.

Vega Cottage excited Matthew Ahlberg, architect and director of design services at Barrett Made, as well. “We’re minimalists,” he says. “That’s the kind of house we would do if you told us to do whatever we liked.”

With everyone on the same page, the project moved forward, but with clear input from the Pelletiers. “Scott is definitely a guy who knows what he likes,” says Barrett, “and that’s clean, functional design.” Scott didn’t want any synthetic materials, ornamentation, TVs, visible technology, or clutter in the house. For both aesthetic and practical reasons, Julie shares his taste; with three children under the age of six, the less there is for them both to clean and maintain, the better.

Keeping that in mind, Barrett Made designed a house with no extraneous detailing, moldings, or baseboards. Windows and doors are framed with simple flat pine. Kitchen and bathroom cabinets are opened by hooking a finger through a hole (“sort of like rock climbing,” says Scott). Drawers, closets, and even laundry hampers are integrated into the walls of all the bedrooms.

“I wanted the house to feel like a boat in the middle of the forest or on an island, standing alone.”
—Scott Pelletier, resident

The oil-rubbed interior and unfinished exterior wood was left to weather. The soapstone that was used in both tile and slab form—most notably for the kitchen counters, the showers, and the bathroom floors—was also left unfinished. The material’s inevitable darkening with use or food spillage is part of the home’s design. “Nothing is meant to look new forever,” Scott says.

As with the materials, so with the house: Scott and Julie anticipate changes over time. The flex space (with an adjacent full bath) is now a combination exercise room/playroom/guest suite but may eventually become a teen retreat.

Currently, the children’s bedrooms all have lofts, though no way to access them. Ladders, or perhaps rock-climbing holds, will come when they can be safely used. Climbing is quite clearly something the parents will encourage— both enjoy backpacking and hiking and are invested in their leisure time with their children. “The whole idea of our lives is that one of us is always home,” says Scott. “Our last name goes on the schedule at work, and one of us shows up. But we always have time for recreation.”

While the house was under construction, the Pelletiers lived in a rental just 400 feet away through the forest, and the family would frequently hike along a deer trail to visit their future home. Though Scott and Julie had no prior experience designing or building a house, they found themselves both interested in and well-suited to the task. “We do a lot of thin-slice decision making at work,” says Scott, “so neither of us was hesitant to make choices.”

Project Credits:

Architect: Barrett Made / @barrett_made

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