Meghan Lavery and Daniel King are such design aficionados that they don’t always part with what they find for Home Union, their midcentury-focused furniture store in Brooklyn. So in 2021, following their decision to keep a wool Cassina Soriana sofa, they told each other, “We really need to get a house for this.”

After renting apartments together in and around Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood for nearly a decade, the couple started looking for a home in Maine, where Meghan grew up—somewhere they could eventually live full-time that would sync with their penchant for vintage. A house for sale near Portland by Marcel Breuer was tempting but felt too close to neighbors. There weren’t many midcentury homes in the area and hardly any by major modernist designers. Would it be their only opportunity?

It seemed so, but that summer they found something unexpected in the coastal town of Harpswell: a 1987 prefabricated home by Deck House, a company akin to Eichler in that it produced modernist residences that were much more affordable than the custom equivalent. Most often found in Massachusetts and North Carolina, the designs vary but typically feature large windows, a waffle front door in mahogany, a living area with a vaulted ceiling, and a post-and-beam construction. “We loved that it had a midcentury feel,” says Daniel of the 3,000-square-foot space, which had those fundamental Deck House elements, plus a commanding view of Harpswell Sound without a neighbor in sight.

The house had seen renovations after a fire in 2011, but the changes weren’t necessarily in the spirit of the original design, so Meghan and Daniel decided to give the home a complete restoration with a few new ideas. “We wanted to refine the space while not disrupting what makes the house special,” Daniel says.

The couple touched every surface, they say, working with Howe Building Company to turn a sunroom into a bedroom, create full baths on each of the home’s three levels, and overhaul the kitchen with custom cabinets by Good Cube Studio. They enlisted Portland architect Jocelyn O. Dickson to create a Bauhaus feel in one bathroom, while Meghan leaned into a Finnish sauna vibe for another. They also refinished the Douglas fir rafters, plastered the walls, added rift oak floors, used translucent glass for interior windows, replaced the staircase’s heavy wood railings with custom steel, and painted the 18-foot brick chimney white.

“It’s almost like we got the house to showcase our furniture, which seems backward from what most people would do.”
—Meghan Lavery, resident

Now, Daniel says, he and Meghan see their home as “a perfect backdrop for our somewhat eclectic furniture and lighting collection, in that it doesn’t distract or feel thematically competitive.” And their tastes are wide-ranging. “We really love the Italian stuff. We love the Scandinavian stuff. We love the Japanese stuff. Our brand marries those things and finds synergy between different design periods,” Meghan says.

And the same is true with the ’80s-vintage house, where virtually every room holds an object by a beloved designer—from an Alessi teakettle by Aldo Rossi to that Soriana sofa, which is now right at home in the couple’s upstairs bedroom.

Project Credits:

Architect of Record: Jocelyn O. Dickson

Builder: Howe Building Company

Interior design: Home Union / @homeunion

Cabinetry: Good Cube Studio

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The January/February 2024 issue will be available online and at newsstands this Tuesday, January 16.

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