Cotuit Bay Pool House

When the property adjacent to their generational Cape Cod estate came on the market, the homeowners moved quickly. The two-acre lot overlooking Cotuit Bay held a 4,065-square-foot home that needed costly repairs. Rather than rebuild the house, they asked us to demolish it and design an outdoor living compound in its place. To avoid a lengthy, uncertain permitting process, we recommended rebuilding on the same footprint as the existing structure.

The homeowner wanted a space that could carry the family through an entire day without returning to the main house. We organized the site into a variety of distinct but cohesive activity zones: a canopy building with a hip roof for pool-side sun protection; a round Marino-glass gas firepit circled by Adirondack chairs for cool-evening conversation; a pavilion with outdoor furniture, marine-grade speakers, and a 65-inch Samsung Terrace outdoor TV; an outdoor cooking area next to the pool house take-out bar with barstool seating for quick lunches; an infinity pool with built-in seating and a waterfall spilling over foundation stones where the water's edge aligns with the view of Cotuit Bay; and an all-cedar outdoor shower tucked aside.

The view of Cotuit Bay was the organizing design element — sightlines and ambiance for each patio area were evaluated against that water line. The pool and patio are enclosed by a modern glass pool fence with black posts, and the property is landscaped with native species gardens.

The pool house itself is a converted garage, reimagined as a custom kitchen with quartz island countertops, a bathroom, and a storage closet. Cabinetry is Longfellow custom — plywood with maple doors, dovetail full-extension soft-close drawers, and soft-close hinges.

The most satisfying design decision was the most deliberate one: keeping the original home's rock foundation. Those stones were repurposed across the site as retaining walls and pool foundation, the infinity pool waterfall, the patio column posts, the foundation for the outdoor grill and kitchen, and the round gas firepit.

The effect is that nothing reads as new. It reads as if it always belonged there.

Full scope of work: demolition to foundation, new Title 5 septic, leaching pit for roof and pool drawdown, infinity pool and patio, garage converted to pavilion, pergola, and poolhouse with custom kitchen and bath, hip-roofed canopy structure with exposed cedar supports, all-cedar outdoor shower, site grading and landscaping, TV and marine-grade outdoor speakers with automation, Lutron lighting system with automation.