The True of Blue
Review Submitted: January 7, 2009
Date of Stay: August 2008
Recommending True Blue is a little bit like telling someone about your latest, favorite breakfast spot which serves delicious food in a quaint setting but is as yet free from crowds: you want the proprietors to prosper and to share the good fortune with others but there are also baser impulses to keep the place secret for yourselves alone! The better angels of our nature prevailing, let us say that the house itself is for us at least half the experience of the Wellfleet vacation which, given the town’s unique charms, is saying a lot and also goes a long way toward explaining why we have been coming here every year for twelve years.
Brent and Susan literally make this house. As the builder, Brent consistently manages to combine simplicity with invention to produce an elegance of casual design from the Spanish bracketing of the house around a central terrace; to the multi-leveled meandering layout which allows for a gratifying sense of spaciousness; to the emphasis on windows, sliders, a sunroom –an openness to light; to the cool grounding practicality of the brick floor in the first floor common space; to the “chic” of customized wood working, shifting from finished to painted to unfinished as utility informs style in kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Likewise, Susan’s furniture, art, plants, and fabrics bring in the light and color in a distinctly Mediterranean fashion. Then there are the outdoor touches: the linked, boxed gardens around the front perimeter, the giant clam shell, the grey-planked walkway bordered with mushroom-like lanterns that wanders up toward the terraced entrance, the pedestal sundial (to name but a few); all under the mildly surreal countenance of that blue, heart-felt, metal roof. But far from cultivated, the grounds are the natural scrub of the Cape. You can glimpse houses through the trees and sounds intrude but, mostly, it’s quiet, gulls way up, flashes of finches closer, the occasional hummingbird; you feel rooted to the terrain.
In keeping with the magic, though close by in the studio, your keepers tend without being seen, appearing only when needed, hinting -just slightly- of elves. A good place to close, for by now you know we are smitten by the place. From time to time, we look at “more reasonable” rentals but, while there’s cheaper out there, we have found nothing that compares.
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