How a Painter Learned to Love His Cottage’s Rainbow Flourishes

How a Painter Learned to Love His Cottage’s Rainbow Flourishes

Along with other quirks in the 1880 Sullivan place.

Homeowner David DesFosses painted the shingles Benjamin Moore’s Mozart Blue and recently completed a flagstone walkway.

ABOVE Built for 19th-century quarry workers, DesFosses’s place and his neighbor’s formed one building; later, they were split apart and moved to new lots. DesFosses painted the shingles Benjamin Moore’s Mozart Blue and recently completed a flagstone walkway.

TEXT BY SARAH STEBBINS
PHOTOGRAPHED BY MYRIAM BABIN

From the November 2022 issue of Down East magazine

When David DesFosses found his 1880 Sullivan cottage, in 2017, “it just sort of called to me,” he says. “The style, quirkiness, and layers of work done. It was obvious there had been a lot of love put into each layer.” What he wasn’t so fond of, however, were the rainbow-colored shingles on the home’s upper gables. “One of the first things I was going to do was paint over them,” says DesFosses, a builder and an artist. “I’m not a rainbow guy.” But after his daughter objected, he decided to leave them alone, “sort of in solidarity with my gay friends and relatives.” He focused on making repairs and painting the house, inside and out, in a spectrum of blues that conjures his seascapes. And when the multi-colored shingles began to peel? “I went up there and breathed new life into the rainbows,” DesFosses says. “They’re part of the house now.”

The breakfast nook and half of the kitchen are housed in an addition with a conical-roofed bump-out reminiscent of Queen Anne towers.

Kitchen/Dining Area

The breakfast nook and half of the kitchen are housed in an addition with a conical-roofed bump-out reminiscent of Queen Anne towers. “Whoever did the work was thoughtful about the interior having a certain amount of rusticity and the exterior matching the Victorian style of the house,” David DesFosses says. Awning windows and glass roof panels bathe plants, and diners, in southerly light. DesFosses purchased the kitchen’s pine table at TraderBill’s Auctions, in Trenton, and built the adjacent sitting-area’s coffee table from mahogany table leaves and birch logs.

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Rather than carve out a dedicated workspace, DesFosses set up his easel and supplies in the living room, where, he says, paint splatters on the Oriental rug add character.

Studio

Rather than carve out a dedicated workspace, DesFosses set up his easel and supplies in the living room, where, he says, paint splatters on the Oriental rug add character. “I like being able to walk by and see what I’m working on. Otherwise, I tend to slack off and forget about it.” Many paintings end up in the cabin he rents out up the road in Beddington, where guests often purchase them.

David DesFosses calls describes the staircase “a glorified ship’s ladder — steep, creaky, and treacherous, but it looks great.”

Staircase

DesFosses calls it “a glorified ship’s ladder — steep, creaky, and treacherous, but it looks great.” He had new balusters made to match the damaged originals and painted the railing and treads navy, in keeping with the home’s dominant palette. “In a small house, I don’t want to get too crazy with varying colors,” DesFosses says. In the adjacent bath, a shower curtain from Society6, printed with a scene from an Indian Mughal carpet, punches up the all-white scheme.

An oil painting by David DesFosses of an abandoned truck in Southwest Harbor crowns a Federal-style mahogany dresser nabbed at an auction.

Primary Bedroom

An oil painting by David DesFosses of an abandoned truck in Southwest Harbor crowns a Federal-style mahogany dresser nabbed at an auction. “Sometimes, I feel like a painting just belongs in a certain spot, so I keep it,” he says. Beyond, the blues and greens of the hallway and guest rooms evoke his in-progress water painting (far left). “I’m attracted to the motion of water and was trying to capture its immediacy with paint.”

David DesFosses divided a large upstairs room to create a pair of guest rooms, one with an existing chartreuse-painted floor and ivory wall paint, the other with sky-blue and mint-green paint on the floor and walls

Guest Rooms

DesFosses divided a large upstairs room to create a pair of guest rooms, one with an existing chartreuse-painted floor and ivory wall paint, the other with sky-blue and mint-green paint on the floor and walls, respectively, that he mixed himself. Regarding the wavy line where the floor colors meet, DesFosses says, “I just basically stopped painting. Everyone seems to like it.”

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David DesFosses, pictured with our photographer’s son, Cassius, and one of the Nigerian Dwarf goats he once owned, on the porch

Porch

Former owner Dirk Erlandsen started Bar Harbor’s Crooked Porch Coffee here. “Actually, the whole house is crooked, which is part of the charm,” says DesFosses, pictured with our photographer’s son, Cassius, and one of the Nigerian Dwarf goats he once owned, all since rehomed. “I had issues with bears and coyotes coming around,” DesFosses says.

A gas stove supplies most of the home’s heat, with an adjacent woodstove providing backup.

Stoves

A gas stove supplies most of the home’s heat, with an adjacent woodstove — fueled with logs cut on DesFosses’s 40-acre Beddington property — providing backup. Overhead, an oil painting of Southwest Harbor by DesFosses mixes with art and an African mask picked up at auctions and antiques shops. “Not to get too woo-woo about it, but this house has a positive energy,” DesFosses says. “Like when I come home, I feel like it’s sort of hugging me; it feels like, this is where I belong.”

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