Remodeling a house at the far end of the island

A small town with a lot of water around it

Census figures put Aquinnah at about 700 residents and roughly 560 homes. The same figures show about 5 square miles of land and more than 35 square miles of water inside the town line, which tells you how much of this place is shoreline and open exposure. Raynham sits about 43 miles to the north as the crow flies, but the distance that matters is the ferry crossing and the drive out to the western end of Martha's Vineyard after it.

Almost 97 percent of the houses are single-family detached and more than eight in ten are lived in by their owners. That is a very particular kind of client base: people who own one house, care about it, and want to know exactly what is going on with it. That suits the way Steve runs a job. He started this company after years of working for builders who did not communicate, and on a job this far from the shop, clear updates are not a courtesy. They are how the work stays on track.

You will know who is running your job and how to reach them.

What wind and salt do to a house built around 1980

The median house in Aquinnah was built around 1980. Only about 15 percent predate 1940, and about 19 percent went up after 2000. So most of what we would be opening up is framing and sheathing from the late 1970s and 1980s, often with fiberglass insulation that has settled, single-pane or early double-pane windows, and roofing and decking that have taken decades of wind-driven rain and salt.

On houses like these, a lot of the work starts outside. Deck ledgers get checked where they meet the house, because that joint is where rot hides on a coastal deck. Roof edges and flashing get inspected before new shingles go on. New footings for a deck or addition go below frost depth, commonly about four feet in Massachusetts, and any structural work is permitted through the town building department under the state code, 780 CMR, with inspections along the way.

Inside, the usual requests are kitchens and baths that were last touched decades ago. Electrical and plumbing go to licensed trades, as Massachusetts requires. If the house is on a septic system and the plan adds a bedroom, a Title 5 design-flow review comes into it, and we raise that at the first walkthrough rather than after drawings are done.

Planning a job that has to cross the water

Nothing about an island job can be improvised on the day. Materials are ordered and staged so a missing part does not mean a lost trip. Ferry space for trucks and trailers has to be planned. Lead time for cabinets, windows and tile matters more here than on the mainland, so the written scope lists what has to be ordered early and why.

You will know who is running your job and how to reach them. Changes are put in writing with the price before the work changes. The site is cleaned and closed up at the end of each day, which on an exposed lot means tarps tied down and nothing left loose for the wind to find.

Weather is part of the schedule too. Roofing and exterior work on an open lot this far out is planned around wind and rain, and when a day is lost to weather we tell you how it moves the rest of the job instead of letting the calendar slide quietly. Interior work like a kitchen or bath gets lined up for those days where it can, so the crew is not sitting idle while the house waits.