My House: A Creative Renovation Inspires Two Musicians to Put Down Roots on the Rhode Island Coast

Summer days are spent almost entirely outside at the home of Sean W. Spellman and My Larsdotter in Westerly, Rhode Island, a seasonal coastal town near the Connecticut border. The musician couple head down to the beach with their two children, who are five and two, early enough to beat the crowds, then come home for lunch, which is often a local catch grilled over an outdoor fireplace. As Sean and My stoke the fire, the kids pick blueberries from bushes on their property or play with hens scratching around. If the waves are still good in the afternoon, Sean heads back out to surf while My and the kids build sandcastles on the shore. After the kids have gone to sleep, the couple retreat to their downstairs studio to paint or make music.

Sean and My didn’t imagine putting down roots in Westerly. They’d been leading mostly nomadic lives touring with their respective bands, Quiet Life and My Bubba, and lucking into sublets between stints on the road. But a short stay here ("We were using the town as a hideout to live affordably and quietly," says Sean, who grew up nearby and still has family in the area) turned into something long-term when he and My bought an almost-too-good-to-be-true property that had a 1930s cottage and a detached three-car garage with a rental unit above it. The couple flipped the script, renovating the cottage to rent it on Airbnb and turning the rental into their home.