A Carpenter's Modern Beach Bungalow

“You better get yourself an office job because you will NEVER work with your hands!” stated my father. As the youngest son of a self-proclaimed do-it-yourselfer, my father made that formal declaration when I was just 12 years old. And he couldn’t have been more wrong. Had he forgotten all those summer nights when my siblings and friends were playing tag, running between the bungalows, while I was hard at work building homes with my Lincoln Logs? Or every time he caught me lost in thought, did he not see that I was actually building something in my mind?

But like a dutiful son, I got an office job after high school. I put on the shirt, tie and suit, which felt as restrictive as armor and I trudged my way into the city. I work with clients to help them land their dream jobs while I was far from mine. After working at the employment agency for over 6 months, I returned home with a declaration of my own. I had quit my job to dig ditches as a laborer on construction sites. You can imagine my father’s dismay. I spent the better part of the next 30 years, climbing the ladder, working in all fields of construction and became a journeyman carpenter. I finally opened my own residential construction company doing small residential remodels. Along the way, I met and married my wife. She too, discouraged from a career in architecture, choose a more conventional path; however, she never lost her love and curiosity for architecture and design. With the help of my wife, niece and brother and a great team, my company has undergone a transformation into a design build firm. We specialize in residential construction and custom homes on the Rockaway Peninsula.

When the opportunity to purchase a small vacant lot in the community where both my wife and I were raised, a former bungalow colony at the base of the Rockaway Peninsula, we jumped at the chance to build a custom home in the place where our story began. We designed every square inch of the home together. We were purposeful in our design of the home as it is less than 1,200 square feet. We employed countless space saving and design strategies without compromising on the modern beach living aesthetic. We maximized for the partial ocean views with a reverse living design concept. We paid attention to every detail in our home from the outdoor rain shower clad with Ipe to the double frieze board trim. We ensured ample outdoor living space with 4 decks and an outdoor patio, despite the postage sized stamp lot. I can only imagine my father’s reaction if given the chance to see my long held vision transformed into reality with my own bare hands, the same hands he declared some forty years earlier would never see a hard day's work.