Architectural Digest: August 2017
Hack an Outdoor Shower Using This Delightful Surf Shack Trick
By Hampton Williams Hofer
Photo: Morgan Ione Yeager
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Move over, mudroom! There's a new rinse-off room in town.
Designer Alicia Murphy’s dreamy trailer-turned-family-respite in Montauk, New York, may only be 800 square feet, but drool-worthy design elements abound inside and out. The mobile home boasts as many showers as it does rooms (three of each): There’s the double-headed master shower, there's the outdoor rain shower for post-ocean rinses, and then there’s the shower in the children’s bathroom that features a door leading right out to the deck. “Chris came up with this idea,” Murphy says, referring to boyfriend Chris Growney, on whom her designer savvy has clearly rubbed off. “It’s a version of a Jack and Jill bathroom, going directly from the deck into the boys’ shower.” Yes, from the deck—where nearly all the family's meals are eaten and where every beachgoer must pass through—one can open a door and step directly into a shower. Through this magical door, everything that enters the home enters it rinsed and clean.
Summer life in the trailer park at Montauk Shores is idyllic, comprised of long outdoor days filled with salt water and sun. Throw in a pair of neat freaks—“and we are neat freaks in a serious way,” Murphy says—and you have a potential problem. Think kids, dogs, bare feet, everything sticky and salty, those endless grains of sand . . . all creeping inside the house. But thanks to the Murphys' clever indoor-outdoor shower solution, the family’s guests, who are abundant in this tightly knit community, aren’t padding through the home’s living areas fresh from the beach just to get to a toilet.
And the shower-to-deck door idea isn’t just for beach houses. Maybe you’re also a neat freak, or just a little bit lazy (aren't we all), but who could deny the appeal of stepping right under a spigot when you arrive home covered in sweat, dirt, pet hair, you name it? In the end, Murphy says, it comes down to functionality. “This is the first project we’ve ever built for ourselves, and when you design for yourself, you really realize what you like,” she says of the Montauk trailer. “We hate clutter. Everything needed to be functional. Here, we got to express how we want to live.”
