When lake-area residents Randy and Shelly Chesley first laid eyes on the home in the Casco Point neighborhood of Orono, they knew right away it was their dream house.
“When we came driving by, it just stood out to me like that’s where I needed to live,” Shelly says. “It reminded me of a farmhouse, but it wasn’t too country.”
The home’s quaint, farmhouse feel and elegant interior touches are the handiwork of a design and build collaboration between Jeff Danberry of Danberry Building Corp. and interior designer Traci Dokken.
At the end of 2012, Danberry came across what was then a rundown home in the Casco Point neighborhood of Orono, in desperate need of some design help. A failed attempt by the previous owner to remodel it as an investment had left it abandoned for years. But when the Danberrys got a glimpse of this diamond in the rough, they knew it had potential.
“We designed the house more as a story-and-a-half look, instead of a boxy two-story,” Danberry says. “There’s a steep roof and dormers popping out, which gives you less square footage on the second story but adds some character to the house.” By adding a family room and a second story, and capturing an unheated screen porch for living space, Danberry was able to increase the livable area of the home by about 1,400 square feet. One of the major structural renovations was adding the second story to the home.
With a budget in mind, Danberry and Dokken were able to integrate their own design sense into the home, while still making it appealing for potential buyers. “People just can’t believe the efficiency of our little Casco house,” Danberry says. “It’s much larger inside than it appears outside.
Dokken says that letting in lots of light was also key to creating the bright feel she was going for. For instance, large windows in the kitchen let in rays of light, bringing a lot of focus to that part of the home.
“When we walked in, we loved the coastal feel,” Shelly Chesley says. “The white center island and the wood from the old barn—those were great features that we fell in love with.”
“It felt exactly like if we were to build [our own] home,” Shelly says. “It’s the exact style we would have chosen anyways.”
