Owners: Matt and Kara Merry
Location: 11 Dolphine Merry Way, off Lambert’s Cove Rd. in West Tisbury.
Property size: 1.4 acres
Builder: Radius Construction, Inc., West Tisbury
Architect: Sullivan O’Connor Architects, Oak Bluffs
Plumbing: Midland Plumbing and Heating, Vineyard Haven
Electric: David Schwab Electric, Vineyard Haven
Interior paint: David C. Hearn Painting, Vineyard Haven
Interior finish work: Jay Bodnar, Aquinnah
Flashing/gutters: John Roriz, Oak Bluffs
Matt and Kara Merry’s West Tisbury home has a quintessential up-Island look, and that may have something to do with the decorative tree inside. Complete with limbs, the native red oak divides the dining and living space, its trunks molded in to the railing and several limbs touching the ceiling.
“I really wanted to have something to define that space, because it’s all open,” Mr. Merry says. “It was a way for me to split the space in a unique way without having a wall there.”
The tree was Mr. Merry’s project: He found it at a job site, took it down, bleached it, then treated it with wax. Mr. Merry also made the outdoor stonewall and whimsical fence, concrete counter tops, chimney, and helped with other miscellaneous items.
The four-bedroom house, which includes a finished basement and a post and beam utility barn, was purposely designed to have a low profile.
“My biggest thing was the fact the lot was a field,” says Mr. Merry. “Essentially, the architect made the design around the fact that we didn’t want to have something that really stuck out there. We wanted to keep it as low profile as we could. If we did a full two-story house it would really stick out, and wouldn’t look as architecturally pleasing as it does now.”
The couple has two children: Lucie, 11, and Josie, 5. Mr. Merry is an excavator, and Ms. Merry owns Pandora’s Box, a clothing store in Menemsha.