WAYNE WARREN: I think that there's a wonder
about being around the water.
And I do find that it's relaxing and calming,
and it just fits my personality and fits me.
BARBARA BURR: The entire home is sort of
oriented around the feeling of being on the water
so that you feel really I think connected
to the water wherever you are.
Our beach in particular just happens to be
in relatively calm waters.
And I think that being here and just being present here,
it is a form of meditation.
WAYNE WARREN: I would absolutely agree with that.
BARBARA BURR: Here, the sunlight really wakes us
up pretty early, which we like.
We also like to sleep with the doors open,
and the birds will also wake us up.
And then we often go for a really long walk
to start off our day.
We're in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts,
in the town of Oak Bluffs.
Martha's Vineyard really has a lot of a feel of sort
of a beautiful country town.
And then in the summer, there is the hubbub
of all of these people coming in for their vacations
and so excited.
But the foundation really is this country town feel,
like that feeling doesn't leave.
When we're not here, our home is in Washington, DC.
When we're driving up, the minute you come over that ridge
and like the Woods Hole ferry is in front of you
and the water and the seagulls and the smells and the sounds,
like everything sort of descends.
I think that as an African-American person,
you've heard about Martha's Vineyard for years because it
has a reputation of being a vacation spot
for African-American people.
It is just such a big part of what makes Martha's Vineyard
Martha's Vineyard today.
And for us, we're a mixed family, so obviously like that
is just amazingly comfortable and welcoming
and wonderful for us.
[calm music]
The property, when you first come in,
there's a living room, a kitchen, two guest rooms.
Upstairs, there's the main bedroom
and a big deck that overlooks the patio and the lagoon.
We have a son, Julian, who is 22 years old.
I think he was four the first time we brought him
to Martha's Vineyard, and we've come
back every summer since then.
And about five or six years before we bought this house,
we found the lagoon.
We were just like, oh.
Once we found the lagoon, we were like,
there's no going back.
This is just an amazing spot.
But it was also like April 2020, so it was the right
the beginning of the pandemic.
Everyone was just sort of still on lockdown.
Then they say this is the kind of house you buy sight unseen.
A week later, we decided we're going
to buy this house sight unseen.
And like five weeks later, we owned the house.
So this, when we first pulled up, we certainly had the,
oh, my gosh, can this be real?
Like this is an amazing--
like, we know the lagoon, but this on the lagoon is just--
it's just beautiful.
So when you first walk in, the first thing
I think that catches your eye actually is the row of windows
across and looking out onto the lagoon, which I just think
is just really pretty, and lets all the light in.
The home is set up to really be comfortable and livable as
well as sort of consistent with the feeling
of being on the water.
One of the things that was always really important to me
was to have a good kitchen because I like to cook.
But I also want a good kitchen that's
near wherever Wayne and Julian were going to be hanging out.
So there's a lot of beach/nautical details
in the house.
A lot of the light fixtures are from actual reclaimed ships.
So there's two guest rooms.
This one has a peachy element.
And then the furniture, the nightstands,
the bed frame, the little bookshelf
are all either reclaimed or antique.
Our other guest bedroom, just sort of the mirror.
This one's the turquoise one.
This came with the house.
They look like stained glass windows.
They are very reminiscent of the kind of detail
that you see in the gingerbread houses
in the campground in town, which is a famous part of Oak Bluffs.
So then this is the door directly on the other side
of the front door that leads out onto the patio
and out into the lagoon.
Literally, it's like four steps from the porch to these stairs,
and the stairs take you right down to the beach.
WAYNE WARREN: So 50 steps and you're at the beach.
BARBARA BURR: We won't count the steps.
WAYNE WARREN: We won't.
BARBARA BURR: But I'm going to just promise you there are 50.
WAYNE WARREN: Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky.
[barbara laughs]
BARBARA BURR: So one of the amazing things
about this particular piece of property
is that it comes with its own beach.
I think it's 135-foot beach.
That's our beach.
Every time the tide goes out, it leaves different stuff.
Here's-- like here's a full scallop, a baby scallop shell.
That's a good one.
WAYNE WARREN: This is the view when we were like, this has
got-- you gotta be kidding me.
Yeah.
That was the moment.
Wow.
Yeah.
BARBARA BURR: So as we go up the stairs,
the banisters are sailing ship mast.
And so that's reclaimed from another vessel.
Coming up the stairs to the second floor
is the main bedroom.
And then this bed actually was made by a local artisan.
These are reclaimed doors.
They're from Indonesia.
And then a local artisan turned them into the bed frame.
Here, one second, you're asleep.
[chuckles] And the next second, here you are--
the lagoon.
Right off the main bedroom, you
just step right out here onto this deck,
and it is something else.
It's really just a whole different view
of the beach and the lagoon.
We can just like stand up here for hours.
WAYNE WARREN: It fits our personalities.
It's quiet.
It's spacious enough for us to entertain with other folks
that we enjoy.
I don't know if it's traditional Martha's Vineyard as much
as it's Barb and Wayne.
It's like it fits Barb and Wayne, you know.
[calm music]
That was a place that Barb and I can grow old together
and Julian can come up, whether it's with his friends
or in a relationship, and it will be a nice, comforting
place to be at.
BARBARA BURR: We are at our happiest
when we have time to go at our own pace.
And so this space and like all of our favorite spots
in the house, they are places that really do give us the room
to take it down a notch and to really
go a little bit slower so we can dive a little bit deeper.
And like I think that there is like a natural connection
between the space and our enjoyment
of going slow and nurturing that internal life.