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A Magnificent Porch Renovation on Fire Island

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NYC architecture firm Bromley Caldari Architects razed the original front of a small house facing the beach on Fire Island and rebuilt it as a double-height cube containing an air space with hefty framing timbers.

Inside the big macho rough-framed porch is a more delicate internal porch-like space – its delicate bleached color palette suggesting driftwood and pearly shells.

Beyond that, an open plan great room for cooking, eating, reading, talking and hanging out, is also now completely open to the seascape in front of the house.

At the far end is the kitchen, where a side wall of numerous small windows now establish its casually beachly bona fides.

The magnificent renovation is of an unambitious little vacation house; a small, dark box divided into a front and back by a bearing wall/fireplace, with two bedrooms at each end.

Now it is nearly transparent.

Approaching the original back of the house, you can now see the great room and out through the new porch front to catch a glimpse of the sea.

A short barefoot walk at the back of the house now takes you to a painting studio.

What were dark bedrooms at the back have been clad in warm timber and filled with light from a full height parade of windows behind a big soft white bed.

The back yard is now an invitation to paint in the circular studio or lazily lap in its sweet sun-drenched pool.

The site is a wooded, narrow lot on the Great South Bay in the resort community of Fire Island Pines.

Like vacation homes in many now popular beach resorts, the original cottage didn’t do justice to the glorious scenery.

Now it does.