English Countryside Meets Cumberland Foreside

ABOVE A new stained-wood door pops against clapboards in Benjamin Moore’s Apparition.

From our Fall 2022 issue 

“You kids aren’t afraid of a project,” remarked a window installer upon arriving at the Cumberland Foreside house Rosie Williams and Matt Marston had stripped down to the studs. They’d purchased their 1980s Dutch Colonial-style place in 2016, on the same road where Marston grew up, despite its convoluted layout, dizzying array of flooring materials, and purple indoor hot tub. “We knew it was going to be a project, and we love projects,” Marston says. Three years in, they decided to overhaul just the kitchen. That was until their then-10-year-old son, Tommy, observed: “You might as well do the whole house now, ’cause I’m out of here in eight years,” recalls Marston. “That ended up being the catalyst for thinking bigger. Then the pandemic happened, and it all made complete sense.”

ABOVE 1) A Cole & Son wallpaper forest envelops Rosie Williams and Matt Marston’s Cumberland mudroom, which also features trim in Benjamin Moore’s Van Deusen Blue, a slate sink from Portland Architectural Salvage, and limestone tile sourced, along with bath tile, from Scarborough’s Classic Flooring. 2) The living room combines an heirloom bureau with local finds, like an Ikat pillow from Home Remedies and brass candlesticks from Blanche + Mimi, both in Portland. 3) The family in their yard. 4) In the powder room, a Rejuvenation mirror and sconces (with bulbs from Etsy) pick up the golden tones in playful Lord Twig Hedgerow wallpaper.

The couple already had a reimagined floor plan, conceived with input from Portland architect Jake Keeler. So when Marston’s family business, Basics Fitness Center, in South Portland, shut down in 2020, he started demoing the interior and plying subcontractors from previous house projects to help. “Being my own general contractor enabled me to make snap decisions, so we could keep progress going full speed,” Marston says. “That’s how you get a 3,400-square-foot home completely rebuilt in one year, during a pandemic.” Williams and their two sons stayed at their rental property in South Portland, while Marston — worried about Covid exposure while working with a crew — slept on a reclining patio chair in the unfinished building. “I had a roof over my head, but I was full-on camping,” he says. Among the most dramatic changes: adding a first-floor suite for Marston’s mom, flipping the staircase’s direction for a more elegant entry, and replacing a load-bearing wall with a steel beam to double the size of the kitchen.

ABOVE 1) Williams’s sister, Cape Elizabeth designer Sadie Lombard, and Tina Rodda, of Portland’s Eyder Kitchens, worked with the couple on the kitchen, which incorporates a steel-and-glass panel by Pownal’s Bradbury Mountain Metalworks and cabinets in Benjamin Moore’s Balsam. 2) In the dining room, an antique kilim rug grounds a walnut table and bench from Craigslist and antique law-library chairs from a Portland firm. 3) In a first-floor bath furnished with a soaking tub and a painting from South Portland’s Barridoff Auctions, classic hex tile feels mod in a two-inch width. 

To help their shiny-new home feel distinguished beyond its years, Williams relied on three-ring binders she’d been filling with inspiration from The English Home and Country Living’s U.K. edition for more than a decade. “British properties are often so reflective of tradition and family, and are put together over years and years,” she says. “I didn’t want this house to feel like it had just been designed; I wanted to give it a gathered, curated feel.” A 1990s English cast-iron AGA range in sapphire — a Craigslist find and replica of one in Williams’s childhood home — anchors the cookspace, which encompasses a British-style “back kitchen” with a pantry in balsam green set off by a custom steel-and-glass panel. Also from across the pond: the mudroom’s Cole & Son Woods wallpaper, which backdrops a Portland Architectural Salvage slate sink hung at child height; the powder room’s Lord Twig Hedgerow wallpaper, depicting wide-eyed creatures in a lush woodland scene; and the primary-bedroom’s Farrow & Ball Orangerie wallpaper, inspired by ornate botanical patterns in 18th-century British hothouses. Against the black-and-white print, Williams layered a blush-colored upholstered headboard, a combo she’d spotted in a Dorset country home. Throughout the house, furnished mostly with pieces from the couple’s previous Portland place, late-19th-century-style brass-and-pearl push-button switches add patina to new drywall.

ABOVE 1) A photo of an English country house inspired the primary bedroom’s Farrow & Ball Orangerie wallpaper and tufted headboard from Bloomingdale’s. 2) Thirteen-year-old Tommy kicks back on his great-grandfather’s maple bed, topped with a Pendleton blanket.

Williams and Marston agree it was their collaborative slow-burn brainstorming that led to a successful transformation. “The first thing out of my mouth when somebody asks me about a project is, ‘How long have you lived with the home?’” Marston says. “You need time to get to know the space, the light, and to see how you want to navigate your home. That’s how you get things just right in the end.”