WHEN Marylouise Oates bought her current house on Cape Cod in 2001, she’d never seen the inside.
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Marylouise Oates and Robert Shrum at their house, which was built in 1916. More Photos »
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A Home on the Cape
The house owned by Marylouise Oates, author of “The Second-Home Book,” and her husband, the political consultant Robert Shrum, required significant work and led her to write the book. More Photos >
She had first laid eyes on it the year before, when she and her husband, the political consultant Robert Shrum, had been visiting friends in Sagamore Beach. Over breakfast, Ms. Oates, a writer, said that she loved the bayside neighborhood, and, helpfully, her friends volunteered that their real estate agent lived next door.
So, after they finished eating, she walked over and knocked on the door: “Hi, you don’t know me; I’m Marylouise Oates, and I want to buy a house here.”
The agent, Barbara Sullivan, laughed as she recently recalled that morning. “I was still in my bathrobe,” she said. Nothing was available then, but by the end of that summer, Ms. Oates and Mr. Shrum — whose primary home was in Washington then — moved into a small house a few blocks from the water. “I liked that first house,” Mr. Shrum said, “but it was teeny.”
The place they’d originally asked about was a 1916 shingled Cape Cod right on the beach. “There was something about it on that hill, a little set apart, that was beckoning and welcoming to me,” Ms. Oates said. “I once told Shrummie that Captain Ahab would have lived in a house like ours. Pre-redo, of course. It was and is very of the sea.”
Unfortunately, that house had been bought by the woman who’d grown up there and, Ms. Sullivan assumed, would never be back on the market. But right after 9/11 that changed. And for the reasonable price of $920,000, Mr. Shrum and Ms. Oates, who also have homes in Los Angeles and New York, finally became the owners of their dream beach house.
And still, they had never seen the interior.
When they finally ventured inside, the couple found some surprises. “It was beyond your wildest dreams,” Ms. Oates said. “Raccoons in the bathroom from the winter and shag carpet everywhere. And the best views were in the walk-in closets.
“Bob kept asking, ‘Why did we buy this place?’ I said, ‘All we have to do is paint it and take the carpet up.’”
Mr. Shrum laughed and said, “Of course, I knew this wasn’t true.”
Thus began the renovations.
In addition to raising the roof to flatten its steep slope and give the upstairs rooms more height, they enclosed some of the wraparound porch and turned it into a sunroom, and built out into another part of it to extend the dining room and kitchen. One of the challenges throughout the construction, though, was sticking to the existing footprint, a code that all houses along the beach must abide by.
As for the walk-in closet views, those are now part of the master bedroom, and the shag carpet turned out to have served a purpose — it protected the fir-wood floors. As Ms. Oates explained, the salty air seasons the wood, burnishing it to deep gold. When they ripped up the carpet, they were able to watch the floors age beautifully.
“It’s extraordinary here,” Mr. Shrum said of Shrum-a-lot, as they call it. (Mr. Shrum worked on Edward M. Kennedy’s 1980 presidential campaign, among many others, including John Kerry’s in 2004). “You get it in your blood and grow very attached to the place. You come up in winter, look out the window, and it takes your breath away. You light a fire and read a book or write.”
Indeed, the view is serene and relaxing — a wide-open expanse of bay cradled on either side by the curving cape, with a few sparse, windblown trees holding steadfast to the poison-ivy-covered cliff that separates the houses from the beach.
The renovation process — along with the experience of managing multiple homes over the years in places that have included the Jersey Shore; West Palm Beach, Fla.; and Beverly Hills — led Ms. Oates to write a book published in February about strategies and tips for remaining sane: “The Second Home Book: The Can-Do, How-To, Get-Through Guide” (St. Martin’s Griffin).
“The book is the house, and the house is the book,” she likes to say. But now she is finished with both. “I’m done doing,” she proclaimed. “I’m done with the fixing and doing. Now I’m enjoying.”
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