Digest/The Woodhull Digest 01.03.2024

The Woodhull Digest 01.03.2024

A Look Back

As we embark on new projects in 2024, our team reflects on some recent ones and is propelled by the momentum of what lies ahead.

Pine Cove

Harpswell, Maine

Pine Cove is a collection of three buildings inspired by its location and artistic and adventurous clients.

The site is unique and quintessential Maine. Our team collaborated with the homeowners to design a home, studio, and guest house that responds to the landscape and takes advantage of natural light and expansive water views. There are also thoughtfully placed interior walls dedicated to showcasing their art collection.

Within the home are spaces for peace and relaxation and others ready for celebrations with family and friends. The interior is an expression of craft and the homeowners’ personal story; inherited family pieces and the client’s own artwork blend with precise millwork.

More photos from Trent Bell will be up on our site soon. Follow along on Instagram or Facebook for an upcoming video series on the life of the Pine Cove project.

Hillside Pavilion

Cumberland Foreside, Maine

This project was a second collaboration between our team and clients who wanted to create a separate outdoor kitchen, guest house, and exercise space overlooking Casco Bay. Woodhull designed and built a pavilion that integrated with the main house and showcased the stunning views of the bay. We used board-formed concrete, a unique material seldom seen in Maine, to add character to the pavilion and establish a visual boundary with the neighboring property. The energy and focus dedicated to this project were palpable, resulting in a building that exudes quality and craftsmanship.

Check out the main house

The main house, Spears Hill, was recently featured in the book:
New View: A Curated Visual Gallery: Twenty Magnificent Homes by Architects of The Northeast

Makers Marsh

Gloucester, Massachusetts

Woodhull design & millwork + Thoughtforms construction. Collaboration is the best way to fully realize a dream project, whether with our in-house crew or partners. This commitment to building trust resonates with our clients, like the homeowners who recently moved in and generously left a review. In a process that demands patience and shared vision, their kind words are the ultimate reward, fueling our passion for crafting not just houses but enduring stories.

“We knew from day one that we wanted to work with Woodhull. We could just feel the quality of their work in the images we saw. The balance of elegant design that didn’t compete with the natural surroundings of the sites they were placed on was exactly what we needed for our unique landscape. We had no idea when we embarked on that journey just how important our relationship with Woodhull would become. Not only are they talented architects but they are kind and thoughtful people. Their management team was exceptional as was their design team. They stuck with us through a long project and we couldn’t be more proud of the outcome. We truly feel it is a house that we all built together. We couldn’t have done it without them!.”

From Our Commercial Team

Our Maine Community

Our commercial team is proud to work on projects that impact the communities in which we live and work. They include an office space for a company that advocates for and empowers people with disabilities, an ice cream shop, a dance studio, a training facility for the blind, a pavilion for a girls’ summer camp, a variety of restaurants, a historic renovation of an Old Port multi-unit apartment building, a full renovation of a 22 room beachfront hotel, numerous affordable housing projects including 18 new units in Madison Maine, an art gallery in Norway, a garden shed for a local elementary school, the Kennebec Arsenal in Augusta, the historic Gehring House in Bethel, the Belfast Co-op grocery store, our own future office, and many more! We are proud of our contributions to the communities these places serve.

Our commercial services

50 Exchange Street

Portland, Maine

In 2020, the building’s owner enlisted Woodhull’s studio to explore the feasibility of adding an additional story, with the goal of creating two apartments on the second floor and two-story apartments on the third and newly constructed fourth floor.

Over ten months, the construction team lifted the roof and added a new story, blending old and new with aluminum panels.

The apartments combine historical charm (plaster, pine floors) with contemporary flair (convenience stairs, roof decks, skylights).

Completed in June 2023, 50 Exchange is a tribute to the Old Port’s past, embracing the future with style. (Stop in to Folia for some last-minute holiday gifts!)

Stay tuned!

Woodhull purchased the historic Safford House at 93 High Street in Portland. Utilizing historic rehabilitation tax credits and SBA programs, Woodhull is renovating and restoring the Safford House to serve as it’s future office. The renovation will showcase the building’s Renaissance Revival-style architecture while creating modern office space.

Learn about our future office

In the Shop

From custom built-ins, furniture, and sculptural headboards to meticulously crafted kitchen cabinets and islands, our millwork shop blends time-honored joinery and innovative techniques to make clients’ and designers’ wildest ideas a reality.

Solving technical challenges is what our Millwork team excels at. For a recent media cabinet, the size and functional challenges of large vertical tambour doors were mitigated by running a horizontal loop of stainless wire through the middle of each of the 108 slats (!), which is then tensioned by turnbuckles, none of which is ever visible, open or closed. In this example, our craftsman worked directly with our design team to solve a challenging design problem: how to hide the TV.