ON TRADITION,naturally

BUILDING
O N T R A D I T I O N, naturally
Beach house recreates childhood memories for generations to come
CottageTour
Photographs by Kevin Fleming
Text by Lynn R. Parks
84 May 2007 DELAWARE BEACH LIFE
Nothing says ‘warmth’ and ‘inviting’ like wood and stone, says interior designer Rosemarie
Dodd Giroso. The living room in Il Gabbiano in Rehoboth Beach is full of both, from the
river stone fireplace to the bead-board walls and ceiling and cherry floor.
DELAWARE BEACH LIFE May 2007 85
The door in the upstairs sitting room, right, opens onto a secondstory deck. Above the door, two parrots sit on a branch in one of
several small wall murals throughout the house. The screened
porch on the front of the house, below, is a favorite gathering place
for members of the Bifferato family.
When Connor Bifferato was a child, his family spent summers in Rehoboth Beach. His father, Vincent A. Bifferato Sr.,
then a Delaware Superior Court judge, and his mother,
Marie, closed up their Wilmington home and brought Connor, his brother, Vincent Jr., and his sister, Kathleen, to the
resort town for two-month stays.
“Back then, my father could arrange it so that he heard
his cases in Georgetown,” says Connor, 40. “We rented a
house in Henlopen Acres, on the ocean block that was called
The Seagull.”
“We always loved the Pines area,” which encompasses
much of northeast Rehoboth Beach, adds his mother. “We
liked the old houses there, all wood with all-wood interiors.”
Years later, when Connor was recovering from a life-threatening illness and two major surgeries, he lay in bed and
remembered those days at the beach.
“I was miserable,” says Connor, who at the age of 32 had
a brain aneurysm and, on the heels of surgery to repair that,
spinal meningitis. “I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t even really
move my mouth, I couldn’t talk. I was home for a long time,
recuperating. And all I really wanted to do was get to the
beach.”
Now Connor has a house at the beach. He and his brother, partners with their father in the Wilmington law firm
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Bifferato, Gentilotti, Biden and Balick, own the home on Columbia
Avenue, just a few blocks from
where the old Seagull stands, and
nearly every weekend this summer,
they and their families, their parents, and Kathleen and her family
will be there.
The name of the house? Il Gabbiano. “The Seagull,” in Italian.
“I wanted to have a beach house
that would be like the one I remember from my childhood,” Connor
says. “I wanted it to look like it had
been here forever, and I want my
children to be able to appreciate it
as much as I appreciated the old
Seagull.”
His brother adds, “We pooled our
resources to meet our longtime goal
of having a place in the Pines area
so we could recreate our wonderful
memories for our children and the
rest of the family. Memories like
those our parents were so kind to
give us.”
Capturing the feel of The Seagull
meant building a house in tune with
the “historical and cultural feel of old
Rehoboth,” Connor says. “I didn’t
want a house that, when you drive
by, you think that it looks like it
belongs in Chevy Chase or Washington, D.C.”
And that meant using old-fashioned natural materials, says interior
designer Rosemarie Dodd Giroso,
owner of Rose Authentica in Wilmington. The outside of the 3,500square-foot house is covered in
unstained cedar shakes, the soffits
are all cedar, the gutters and rainspouts are copper, naturally aging to
green, and the stones that cover the
foundation are real, individually laid
by hand. The roof is metal — taupe,
to blend in with the rest of the
house.
Inside, natural materials abound.
“Nothing says ‘warmth’ and ‘inviting’ like wood and stone,” Giroso
says.
Floors throughout the house are
Brazilian cherry. Nearly all of the
walls, and many of the ceilings, are
covered in bead-board and wood
panels, some painted white and
some colored with a light whitewash. There is very little drywall.
“Drywall evokes a feeling of new
construction,” Connor says.
River stones that cover the wall
around the living room fireplace are
real — no faux stone here and no
fake gas logs either. The fireplace,
lined with butter-colored masonry
blocks, burns wood.
But all this emphasis on natural
ingredients does not mean that Il
Gabbiano is lacking in architectural
detail. “I am an architectural designer,” Giroso says. “This house could
stand beautifully on its own, even
without a single piece of furniture
in it.”
That detail starts in the entrance
area, part of the first-floor great
room that includes the living room,
dining room and kitchen. A 4-foot,
accurately-oriented compass rose is
inlaid on the floor just inside the
front door, in maple, cherry, oak
and walnut. An inlaid frame around
the rose is mirrored on the ceiling,
where exposed beams draw a
square.
The exposed beams continue onto
the living room ceiling, sketching
interlocking squares. Open shelving
around the front living room corner
imitates a built-in, glass-front china
closet in the opposite dining room
corner.
The mortar of the natural stone
fireplace is tucked in behind the river stone faces, making the mortar
nearly invisible to give a “dry-stack
effect,” Giroso says. Large pieces of
pink soapstone make up the hearth
and mantel, and two pieces of
Delaware blue granite — the same
stone for which the Wilmington
Blue Rocks baseball team is named
— form a sailboat in the middle of
the stone, above the mantel.
“It took us five days to design the
fireplace,” Giroso says. “We looked
at a lot of stone.” ➤
Bead-board shows up again
upstairs, in the master bedroom, right. The walls are
paneling with a light green
whitewash. Each bunk in the
children’s room, left, has its
own small book rack and
storage drawer.
The kitchen is separated from the dining area by a row of
cabinets, painted corn silk yellow and topped with black granite that has been smoothed to a matte finish. The cabinets and
counter continue on around the kitchen wall, interrupted only
by a large stainless steel stove and a rectangular, hammered
copper sink. The backsplash is — what else? — bead-board.
Polished granite, gray and black, tops the island that sits
opposite the stove. And the whole kitchen is lit by dozens
of small halogen lights, tucked behind shelves and above
counters.
Next to the kitchen and behind the living area is an open,
curved staircase with cherry treads, wrought-iron balustrades
and a wood banister, painted pale yellow. “I didn’t want a big
vaulted ceiling in the living area,” says Connor, standing at the
top of the steps and looking down into the living room. “They
always look cold to me. But I did want a connection between
the first floor and second floor, so you could easily look from
one to the other. This seemed a better way to do it.”
Throughout the second story, which includes a sitting room
and four bedrooms, are small wall murals, whimsies by local
artist Raven Potts. Three mice scuttle along the baseboard in
the hallway, two parrots strain to look out a sitting room window, a monkey skims along the top of a light-switch plate,
dropping a banana peel on his way. In the children’s bedroom
— Connor’s children are 6, 4 and 2, and Kathleen’s are 15, 13
and 10 — where there are three sets of built-in bunk beds, a
mermaid watches as a cluster of puffins go about their business.
Back downstairs, in a small powder room behind the
kitchen, a snake slithers up the back of the door, its red
tongue out to catch a whiff, perhaps, of the turtle that creeps
along the baseboard.
“Children attach to very different things than we do,” says
Giroso. “We wanted to include little features [for them].”
“They may not think much about them now, but in 50
Connor Bifferato lives to cook big family meals in the kitchen, right, and
serve them at the custom-made table
in the dining room, left. In both rooms,
the ceilings, with bead-board and
exposed beams, are a focal point.
years, they will still remember them,” says Connor.
And, if things go according to plan, they still will be able
to see them. The Bifferatos built this house with the idea that
it will stay in the family, and they built it to last — “We
could have gotten the look we wanted with fake stone and
fake wood, but with the materials we used, we know that
100 years from now the house will be in the same condition
it’s in now,” says Connor.
“They have no intention of ever selling this house,” says
Giroso. “I knew when I was designing it that I wanted to be
a part of the memories that are going to happen here.”
“I hope that my great-great-great-grandchildren come
here,” says Connor. “When I was sick and feeling awful, I
wanted to return to someplace where I had been happy. And
this is it — this is my sanctuary. If I had put my memories
down on paper, that wouldn’t have come as close to what I
wanted as this house does.”
Somewhere, un gabbiano is smiling. ■
Lynn Parks is a freelance writer based in Seaford.
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