FRANCES SCHULTZ: Of the many idyllic settings in New England, this historic wharf in Nantucket Harbor must be one of the most. And here we are.

GARY McBOURNIE: There's a row of old fishermen's cottages that lead out to the end of the wharf. Many of them date from the 19th century, and if you look at photos over the past 100 years, they really haven't changed.

Your clients have a house in town, and this little fishing cottage is used primarily as a boathouse?

Yes, mainly as a sort of staging place for the boat and overflow for guests.

What kind of boat is it?

A Hinckley Picnic Boat — it's a big old wooden boat, new but looks old. The house is really an extension of the boat and meant to look like another galley and stateroom. The kitchen, for example, is all teak countertops.

And that beautiful lattice that allows ventilation — crucial on boats. Very shipshape.

Yes, it is kind of yachtlike. And it lets us hide the freezer and the ice maker. Also the open shelves have a kind of casual charm. We didn't want to take it too seriously. And then there are the ship's bunks as banquettes for a seating area, and a sleeping loft that only an old salt could love. Or someone reasonably coordinated.

One of the most literal nautical iterations is the corner sitting room off the living room. But for the window instead of a porthole, it really could be a ship's stateroom.

The bunks we had made right there on the island by a great cabinetmaker named Carter Mitchell.

The sleeping loft is such fun. I bet children love it.

The loft was already there. We built the walls up a littler higher for privacy.

Looks like you left the ceiling and beams as they were. Was that a difficult decision?

These are actually two cottages joined together. We suffered over it for months, wondering about trying to adjust it so it all looked the same, and finally I said, listen, it is what it is. If we start fooling around with this too much it's gonna look fake. And yet we wanted it to be fresh and clean-looking and reflect Now. We didn't want Ye Olde Nantucket. We wanted to build on what was there and maybe exaggerate it a bit. There would never have been bead board in those days, but that takes the cottage a little more into the '20s, '30s, and '40s. The bright crispness of the white walls balances it.

Which brings me to a big point of the story: the sometimes slippery slope of theme decorating and how one gee-gaw too many can put you right over the line into cliché-land.

There is that fine line. At one point we had a lot more flags and things going on and I said, oh no, I think we've gone...

Overboard, to use a nautical term?

So we started removing stuff and found the right level.

In the words of whoever it was: edit, edit, edit. It's like wearing jewelry. If you think it might be too much, it is.

The client wouldn't like that either. We didn't just go out and buy "the look." Their collection of maritime art and nautical objects has evolved over the years, much of it from right there on the island. Our job was to put it together in a fresh way.

How did you treat the floors?

It's just a plank floor painted with Benjamin Moore deck paint and spattered with red, blue, and white. There is a wool rug in the living room, because cotton by the water would mildew. We had to be practical.

Practicality must have been a consideration on the deck, too.

The deck is pretty straightforward stuff. We needed something that wouldn't blow away and would hold up to the weather. Teak furniture and Sunbrella fabric, hydrangeas and geraniums, and there you go.

Your pragmatism is refreshing, and your restraint admirable. I can see how the temptation to over-design must have been there.

I just did what needed to be done and kept the focus on the surroundings, the harbor, and the boat. We didn't want to upstage the reasons we were there for. You don't always need to make a wow statement. It can be wow in its own right.

From the sound of it, I'm guessing you didn't even have to discuss the color scheme, that the blue and white choice was simply understood.

Well it fits, you know, in a cottage down by the water. We weren't going to use hot pink and green.

Although I've noticed a good bit of that, too, in Nantucket.

Yeah, but we just kind of wanted it to settle back into the water.