It’s possible you’ll know Anthony Esteves from Soot Home, the pitch-black Maine residence that’s turn into one thing of an Web sensation within the final half decade. Or maybe you’re one of many 55 thousand individuals who comply with him on Instagram, the place he builds stone partitions, chars wooden, and painstakingly restores outdated home windows by hand. (He additionally makes a cameo, sometimes, modeling for Rudy Jude, the small-batch clothes line with a cult following created by his accomplice, Julie O’Rourke.)

For us, it’s his intentional, hand-made strategy to constructing—working with a palette of native supplies, typically right down to the nails—that’s had us following Anthony’s work since we first featured Soot Home—and the redone Cape throughout from it—in 2017. So we have been delighted to see that he and designer Petra Simmons to launch a brand new agency: Simmons Esteves Studio in Belfast, Maine, spurred by their mutual dedication “to creating areas which might be deeply knowledgeable by place and vernacular constructing methods.”

In the present day we’re sharing one of many studio’s debut initiatives: Merrydown, a renovation and addition to an 1850s Cape in Deer Isle. “The shoppers, a pair of artist-creatives from England and Maine, initially related with Anthony years beforehand after his function within the New York Instances,” Anthony and Petra inform us.

“The positioning is situated inside a bigger property, with houses that home three generations of year-round residents and guests,” they are saying. “It’s located very near a quiet street that may be a favourite native strolling route, so neighbors and household cease by steadily. The householders wished to revive their beloved Cape and create extra space to assemble—and it was additionally vital to them to have areas that help their art-making, work, cooking, and gardening.”

As for the identify Merrydown? “It got here from an outdated bottle the shopper discovered within the partitions of the unique home,” Anthony says.

Take a look on the completed house, courtesy of the newly minted Simmons Esteves Studio.