PROJECTS

Gracing Vineyard Haven’s William Street Historic District since1873, the Captain Benjamin Cromwell House was ready for renovation. Cromwell was a steamboat captain and operated a ferry service from New Bedford to the Vineyard starting in 1856. The house remained in his family until 1948 when it was sold and turned into apartments. The subsequent owner returned it to a family home.

 

This project involves the complete design services overseen by Vineyard Decorators, engineering and design by MV Engineering & Design and the renovation led by D. Best Construction.  While the home in most people’s eyes was beautiful, historic and wonderfully detailed, the owners had a vision and desire to create living spaces that lent themselves more towards theirs and today’s lifestyles.  

 

To accommodate a larger kitchen and common entertainment space it meant opening up the center of the house’s first floor, relocating a 1/2 bath from the middle of it, reducing the size of the formal dining room, creating an attached professional work space and relocating many of the visible heating and plumbing pipes added during the last century.  

 

No easy feat for the faint of heart, the three worked diligently together, which involved installing a significant steel package indoor to carry the unique loads and spaces above. The result then created floors and ceilings that were all flush with each other from 4 different areas.  And most importantly, the redux allowed for upgrades in all utilities to meet code, the provisioning of AC throughout the house with electric heat pumps, updated baths and general lighting and a converted oil to propane system thereby allowing the owners to continue to use their historically correct large sized radiators. D. Best was responsible for the bar built-in, trim, floors and painting.