Natural Selections
Couple favored stone, fibers and reclaimed wood when planning their South Bethany home
By Lynn R. Parks | Photographs by Carolyn Watson
From the July 2023 issue
Mark and Darlene (“Dar” to her friends) Dunn love their home in the Cat Hill neighborhood of South Bethany.
“Our house is full of texture and layers, all natural materials and reclaimed wood,” Dar says. “It’s very approachable and warm.”
But what they love even more is the home planning and building process — so much so that they don’t balk at the idea of doing it all over again. “This might not be our last house,” Dar says. “We enjoyed the process. And I love moving! It’s so recharging, kind of resets the button.”
The couple bought their Cat Hill lot in 2019 and started construction in November of that year. Mark, who works for a property restoration company in Rockville, Md., drew the plans for the house himself and helped with construction, serving as general contractor and doing all the tile work in the kitchen and bathrooms. Dar did the interior design. The framer was Noel Rivera, owner of Frankford-based NC Construction, and the finish carpenter was Dustin Bunting, owner of BZB Home Improvements in Georgetown.
“We wanted a classic home that has a coastal look,” Mark says. He drew three gables at the front “to give the house interest and dimension,” and a screened front porch. “We enjoy being out there in the evening, interacting with the neighborhood.”
To lengthen the time they can enjoy their porch, they mounted two heaters on the ceiling. They also like to open the three sets of sliding doors between the porch and living room, to let heat from the wood-burning fireplace flow outward. “We’ll even have the fireplace going in June,” Dar notes. “We like the ambiance.”
The home’s ground-floor foyer has a flagstone floor, installed by Mark, and features a 10-foot rectangular wooden table, originally from a church. A large French pottery jar sits on the floor next to the table; a second piece of French pottery, a mixing bowl, sits on an unused part of the steps.
The living area and primary suite are on the second level. Floors there (and on the third level, where four guest rooms are located) are reclaimed quarter-sawn white oak boards. (Quarter-sawn is a way of cutting that enhances stability.) Stair treads are also reclaimed oak; the banister is composed of stainless steel balusters, unpainted, and poplar handrails, covered with white, high-gloss oil paint.
Reclaimed wood shows up again in the kitchen. The thick (about 3-inch) slab of heart pine that is the top of the island was originally part of the subfloor at the Scranton Lace Company in Pennsylvania, built in 1890 and razed in 2018.
The kitchen backsplash is beige zellige, rustic-looking terra-cotta tile that is fired with olive pits. Two bowl-shaped pendant lights that hang over the island are from Murano, Italy, near Venice. And the stove is by Bertazzoni, an appliance manufacturer in Guastalla, Italy. “It doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles,” Dar says. But it’s perfect for her husband, whom she describes as an “excellent chef.”
Between the living room and dining rooms stands an 18th-century linen-press, or cabinet, built in Ireland from wood that bears the traces of having been infested with worms. “I bought this 40 years ago,” Dar says. “A friend’s mother said to me, ‘When you start earning money, buy a good cashmere sweater.’ Well, I bought this.”
The dining table is a glass top, sitting on a pewter frame. The sideboard is a simple piece of slate, mounted on the wall and matching the slate that forms the hearth in the living room.
Dar and Mark moved to South Bethany from their home in northern Baltimore County, Md. Dar’s family has a vacation home in the resort town and they knew they wanted to retire there.
“In Maryland, the luggage was always packed on a Friday night, ready to come to South Bethany,” Dar says. “This is a community that we know and love, and when we came here to live, it was like coming home.”