If it’s possible to divide the world of homebuyers into people who can’t see past the awful carpet and those who take a deep breath and move forward, Jess Grane falls into the second category.
“It was greenish,” Ms. Grane said in a horrified voice, referring to the patterned flooring she found in a mid-century oceanfront co-op in the Hamptons hamlet of East Quogue, N.Y. “How on earth do you put a rug in a beach house?”
Other buyers who managed to get past the carpet might have been put off by the size of the unit – it’s only 50 square feet. But for Ms. Grane, a New York transplant from Barcelona who is married to a fellow Spanish man and has two children, small was no deterrent. As vice president of marketing at Activia, a yogurt brand owned by Danone, she said she prefers modest beach houses like the cottages in her native Catalonia to the many huge estates in Long Island’s East End.
The house where the carpet was moldy was neither a cottage nor a maritime pleasure palace, but an apartment in a 1965 apartment complex called Round Dune, which consisted of four two-story round buildings. The glass-walled buildings sit on a narrow ridge between Shinnecock Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, offering water views from their 76 units. Ms. Grane recalled seeing for the first time “these little apartments overlooking the ocean,” each with a large terrace. It is “a hidden gem among the large villas,” she said.
In 2022, she and her husband Ben Boix, vice president of customer relationship management at eyewear giant EssilorLuxottica, paid $415,000 for an upper co-op and began renovations in March. They completed the renovations in just eight weeks. And one of the first things that had to go was the attack carpet.
The couple also tore out the unit’s single bedroom to no longer obstruct views of the surrounding sea, sky and greenery. “Even if a room is small, anything with a glass wall looks huge,” Ms. Grane said. They took advantage of the nearly 10-foot ceiling height to convert a windowed walk-in closet into a bedroom for their 14-year-old son, Adrian, and 8-year-old daughter, Emma, and stacked an adult loft bed above it, adding storage space between the two sleeping areas. The bed is accessible via a ladder in the living room.
The drive for simplicity dictated the interior palette of bold white and cream with royal blue accents. The neutrals were inspired by Mediterranean beach houses, reflecting the incandescent glow of the eternal sun. Ms. Grane noted that blue is a Hamptons color that she often sees in striped fabrics.
Newly paneled, white painted walls match the ceiling. Replacement floorboards were laid and only sisal carpets were added.
Simplicity also informed the transformation of the 1960s kitchen into a space whose centerpiece is an island where Ms. Grane regularly prepares paella. This element is covered in a matte, sand-colored Cosentino surface material from Spain, which she says she prefers to the light, glossy marble; Woven seagrass lamps from Morocco hang above it.
“Even our paella pans are beige,” she said. “Because everything, absolutely everything had to speak the same language: calm.”
A cluttered wall unit was swapped for open shelving custom-ordered from Etsy. Most of the rest of the kitchen came from Home Depot.
In short, there is nothing precious here, except perhaps the kitchen exhaust system, a premium purchase that Ms. Grane felt was necessary given the small space and her love of cooking. “We didn’t want to spend a lot,” she said. “You’re close to the beach; it’s humid.”
Beach erosion is also a factor in their reserved attitude. In 2020, Round Dune launched an emergency project to replace some dunes with geocubes, sand-filled containers that keep erosion at bay, after 50 feet of beach was wiped away by northeast winds in a single year. But no one knows what devastation the next big storm will bring. The fleeting enjoyment of summer weekends has a whole new level of precariousness.
The family, who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, visits the restaurant regularly from mid-May to October, when Round Dune closes for the season. Ms. Grane takes at least two weeks in July to spend mother and daughter with Emma on the beach while Adrian pursues summer activities in the city.
With its sun-bleached vibe and a single closet full of swimsuits and gear, the small unit offers activities beyond its glass walls: splashing in the surf, swimming in the complex’s pool, playing tennis. The terrace, where the family eats most meals, is large enough to accommodate up to a dozen paella eaters.
“Without the patio it would be very, very different,” Ms. Grane said. “I have my glass of wine while the kids do other things and just sit there as the sun goes down.”