Our home remodeling services directory can provide invaluable information when you're getting ready to start moving forward with your remodeling project. Click here to visit our Homeowner's Resource Guide containing verified architects, interior designers, landscapers, building contractors, and more.

Harding Store Historic Remodel

A former old village general store finally gets the respect it deserves.

ARCHITECT/BUILDER: POLHEMUS SAVERY DASILVA
TEXT: TIM WELLER

It’s one of Chatham’s landmark structures, but until four years ago, the old Andrew Harding General Store never got much respect.

“It was just awful,” says Bonnie Daggett, who owns the property with her husband, Bill. “We didn’t even want to pull into the driveway when we arrived to go through the house. It was ugly.”

Harry Cutts, an agent for Stage Harbor Realty, showed the house to the Daggetts on that September day in 2004. “Bonnie asked me how many times the house had been shown, and I told her about 100,” Cutts says. “Let’s just say it was the kind of house where whoever bought it would need a vision of what they wanted to do.”

The Daggetts had a vision. So the couple from Niskayuna, NY, ended up buying a little piece of history at 151 Main St., in the town’s Old Village.

Harding history
Andrew Harding, merchant, fisherman and man about town, opened the store in 1865 with his brother, Isaiah. The store quickly became the village’s gathering spot. Harding’s granddaughter, Virginia Harding McGrath, remembers it as a “glorious hodge-podge.”

“Uncle Andrew,” as his friends called him, stocked just about everything in the 1,500-square-foot ramshackle structure: nail kegs, fishing supplies, paint, candy, cartons, boat gear, Pilot crackers and kerosene. In season, ripening bananas hung from the ceiling. The only items he didn’t carry were meat and what he called “women’s gear.”

Customers helped themselves to whatever they needed and left money that Harding collected at the end of the day. In winter, villagers sat around the pot-bellied stove whittling wood chunks into lobster pegs. In summer, old-timers spun yarns on long wooden benches out front that Harding called “anxious seats.”

Legend has it that Joseph C. Lincoln, the famous Cape Cod writer, frequently strolled down Main Street from his nearby summer house at 146 Shore Rd. to soak up the store’s atmosphere. He developed many a character for his Cape-themed books from the true-to-life characters he met at the store—or so the story goes.

When Harding died in 1911, the store began a gradual transformation. In the 1930s, two women operated a tearoom in the building. In 1941, a new owner moved the building back from Main Street, turned it sideways, removed several additions and made it into a summer residence.

Location, location, location

Although at first the Daggetts didn’t think much of Uncle Andrew’s old store, they loved the location: right in the center of the history-rich Old Village, across the street from the ocean and a few blocks from Chatham Light and Lighthouse Beach. As Bill Daggett said at the time, “What’s not to like about owning a home on (old) Main Street in Chatham?”

The Daggetts are believers in, and veterans of, historic preservation projects. They’ve remodeled several buildings in upstate New York. They knew any makeover of the Harding store might be painstaking and difficult. So before closing the deal, they contacted Polhemus Savery DaSilva, Architects/Builders with offices in Chatham and Osterville.

“It was a unique property, and you could see the charm underneath,” Bonnie Daggett says. “We wanted to see if they could make the house more livable while retaining the historic character of the place. We wanted to do it right, and they convinced us it could be done.”

Design Principal John R. DaSilva, along with architect and project manager Charles Hildebrand, combed through the property and drew up plans for the three-bedroom, three-bath house.

Their overarching philosophy was straightforward: Restore the building’s original half-Cape design; add a little more living space; maintain the house’s traditional look and feel; and preserve as many of the original features and significant historic items as possible.

“We all agreed we didn’t want to change the exterior too much,” DaSilva says. “We wanted to work with the existing footprint of the house. It’s a small space. The idea was to make it updated and functional in today’s terms, without losing its character.”

These days, many homebuyers new to the Cape opt for big rooms and open floor plans. Not the Daggetts. “They were unusual clients because they liked the traditional small rooms you’d find in an old, Cape-style house,” DaSilva says. “It was their personal preference.”

DaSilva and Hildebrand faced several major obstacles. Ceilings were low, especially in the kitchen and upstairs bedroom. The house’s interior was dark. Bathrooms and bedrooms felt cramped. The 1950s-style kitchen did not connect to the dining room because a large bathroom blocked the way. “We faced significant challenges,” Hildebrand says.

To get things started, Hildebrand “took it down to the studs.” His goal was to rip out the old and dated, while saving the historically significant, which included wood flooring and much of the trim. “When you get into that initial phase of the project, you never know what you’re going to find,” Hildebrand says.

What they did find was a bit of serendipity. Although most of the store’s contents had been removed and donated to the Chatham Historical Society in the 1970s, Hildebrand and DaSilva found actual evidence of the old store. “When we got into the walls, you could see where the store shelves had been,” DaSilva says.

One of DaSilva’s and Hildebrand’s big concerns was the upstairs bedroom. It was small and dark. Their solution? Punch out a dormer on the front of the house and add another in the rear over the bathroom. “Adding dormers was a big change,” Hildebrand says. “It made the rooms feel bigger and let in more natural light.”

That bedroom, now a child’s room decorated in a nautical theme, is bright and airy. Morning sunlight streams in from the east. The dormers create vertical lines which add a sense of height, contrasting with the traditional angles of the upper story room. Sunlight cascades into the bathroom, and the sense of light contrasts with navy blue tiles, highlighted with white insets.

Classic farmhouse feel

The kitchen was another issue. It was old-fashioned and cramped, with a low ceiling and no direct access to the dining room. The appliances were dated, and a large ventilation fan jutted out over old Formica countertops. Hildebrand and DaSilva thought if they raised the ceiling just slightly, they could dramatically open up space. “The original plate height (the top of the wall which dictates ceiling height) was only seven feet. We wanted to push that up a little bit and put in a cathedral ceiling,” Hildebrand says. “We used exposed beams and existing sheathing. It created a dramatic effect.” They also downsized the full bathroom into a powder room, which allowed access to the dining room.

Rebecca Brown, Kitchen Designer of Classic Kitchens and Interiors in Hyannis, helped with that part of the project. “The Daggetts had a feel for the look they wanted—I’d describe it as a classic farmhouse feel—and my job was to interpret their wants and make it all work within the existing space limitations,” she says.

Working with displays in Brown’s showroom, the Daggetts selected a deep farmhouse sink with a curved, brushed-nickel faucet and turnstile handles reminiscent of the early 1900s. Brown installed bluish-gray Corian countertops atop pale yellow cabinets fitted with satin nickel pulls and knobs. The cupboards flanking the windows over the kitchen sink boast two punched tin inserts etched with classic pineapple and lighthouse designs. Matching painted bead-board walls pull the cabinetry together and expand the sense of space and light.

Downstairs, Hildebrand transformed the basement into a bright, modern family room which opens, through French doors, onto a sweeping brick patio. White bead-board wainscoting surrounds the perimeter of the room, meeting at a white built-in corner cupboard for a wide-screen television. The built-in proved a minor headache for Mike Hayes, who built it in the shop at Signature Woodworks in South Chatham. “We realized that we weren’t going to be able to get the cupboard through the doors,” he says. “We had to make it in separate pieces and assemble it once we got inside.”

Interior design

Decorating issues proved equally challenging. Nancy Nobel of Interiors Etcetera in Orleans helped Bonnie Daggett select wallpaper, paint and window treatments. “She loved the country look,” Nobel says. “But she didn’t want things to be too cutesy. She wanted things simple because it’s a small house. Yet she wanted fabrics and paint that had enough punch.”

When Nobel came on board, the Daggetts already had made decisions about much of the furniture—long distance from their home in New York. “I wouldn’t do it that way again,” Bonnie Daggett says. “It was a little bit of a nightmare trying to make selections when you weren’t right there. We were worried about getting the right scale. And then just trying to schedule deliveries was a huge problem. But somehow it all came together.”

Nobels work complemented the furniture selections (she called it “retrofitting”). “Bonnie and I worked extremely well together,” Nobel says, “and as her level of trust increased, she got more and more comfortable with what we were doing.”

Exterior considerations

Outside, a fenced-in deck running along the south side of the house dominated the property. “The deck had to go,” Bonnie Daggett says. “We just couldn’t live with it.”

Polhemus Savery DaSilva called in LeBlanc Landscape Design of Cotuit. “It was pretty bad,” says Mary LeBlanc, remembering the first time she saw the hulking structure. “It was huge and had this ugly lattice and 13 or 14 risers. It was totally inappropriate for a period house.” She began trading ideas, and sketches, with Hildebrand. “It was very much a collaboration,” she says.

The plan they ultimately settled on called for upper and lower fieldstone patios connected by brick walkways and framed with granite walls. The design was striking.

“It was a little site that presented many challenges,” LeBlanc says. Chief among them was an eight-foot grading differential. On the upper level, LeBlanc connected one patio and walkway to the dining room through a set of double French doors. Brick stairs framed by stone edges lead down to ground level on the south side, where another patio leads into the basement family room through French doors.

Leblanc also re-sized the landscaping. “Everything was so overgrown that you didn’t really notice the house from the front sidewalk. We ripped almost everything out and started over.” Leblanc used hydrangeas, lilacs and other “old-fashioned but appropriate” plants. She raised the canopies of the large maple trees in front. “We wanted a delicate look,” she says. “The Daggetts wanted to keep things very simple.” She then replaced the old, rotting split-rail fence running along Main Street with a white picket fence. Finally, she redesigned the driveway so the Daggetts would not have to back out onto Main Street.

Family matters

Bill and Bonnie Daggett love their remodeled gem. And so does the town. Chatham officials designated the property a Preservation Award recipient in 2007, recognizing the couple’s efforts to preserve a historic building. Whenever the Daggetts can, they break away from their education consulting business and escape to Chatham. “We just love it here,” Bonnie Daggett says. “We love the house and we love the town.”

But with five grown children and nine grandchildren, the couple gradually realized that they couldn’t accommodate the crush of family and friends during holidays or at the height of the summer season. So somewhat reluctantly, they put in another call to Harry Cutts, their real estate agent.

“I told him we couldn’t take on another ‘project,’ not after what we’d been through,” Bonnie Daggett laughs. “I told Harry that whatever we ended up with, it just couldn’t be as daunting as this project was.”

The Daggetts ultimately settled on another cottage about a block away, still located in the Old Village, but not so “historic.” They called Polhemus Savery and DaSilva and renovations are now well under way. “It’s got a lot of potential,” she says. “This will be where our children, grandchildren and friends stay. We’ll all be close by, but not right on top of each other.”

“Uncle Andrew” would have approved.

For a complete list of verified Interior Designers, see our Verified Directory.