Jersey Shore Magazine

J e r s e y s h o r e • F A L L / H O L I D A Y 2 0 1 5 52 JERSEY SHORE HOMES Reinventing The Traditional Beach Home Post Sandy, A New Bay Head Home Hopes To Transform Shore Design by Christine Menapace B ay Head is perhaps best beloved for what it doesn't have. It doesn't have a busy boardwalk. It doesn't have flashy amusements. It doesn't have noisy seaside restaurants, a pulsing nightlife, or endless blocks of souvenir shops. Instead, it has its own quiet, refined appeal that harkens back to summers of a forgotten era. Its quaint shopping district charms with its unique stores, shops, and eateries. Orderly blocks of historic cedar shake homes nestle on a narrow ribbon of land between the ocean and bay. Plump blue summer hydrangeas flank wide, rocking chair front porches. The crunch of pea gravel and the cry of gulls punctuate the season. This is not a hamlet of change and modernity. And that is exactly its appeal to residents. It is a hot summer day with a slight breeze, and Charles Rose stands in what will be the great room of a five-bedroom, 4,843 square foot home at 610 Main Avenue in Bay Head. The epicenter in a busy hive of construction, Rose is surrounded by sawdust and noise, negotiating with various contractors and talking intermittently on his cell phone. The town inspector wants water diverted elsewhere, ASAP. A rep from Crestron needs to discuss the home automa- tion. And a large order of beaded board has arrived. As president of RBG Design-Build, Rose and his team are four weeks away from finishing the four mil- lion dollar home, one he hopes will serve as more than just an upscale vacation home, but as a paradigm shift away from traditional construc- tion practices in this very traditional town. Classic cedar shake is instead replaced with a aesthetically identical weather resistant, high tech materi- al backed up by an energy efficient "sealed" ZIP System ® of exterior sheathing. The system keeps mois- ture out and air in, while allowing panels to dry properly. Grand histor- ic exterior millwork and moldings, once wood, have been replaced by maintenance free, seamless Fypon architectural accents. The engineered fiberglass roofing, which resembles slate, is instead resistant to one hun- dred thirty mile-per-hour hurricane continued on page 54

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