artist form, Thom saw a blank canvas and couldn’t resist getting to work, sketching away his vision for this tiny little house on pilings that rested completely over a gorgeous 360° view of Barnegat Bay.
What the designer saw upon entering the home for the first time would have been enough to make any other prospective buyers turn around and walk back out the door. “The previous owners really let the place go,” he remembers, “the real estate agent said that at that point she must have shown this house more than 200 times already.” There were dilapidated walls and rags on the windows. The floors were covered in bright orange linoleum flooring, and when you looked up, a dropped ceiling was quite literally dropping overhead. Measuring at 24 feet long by 12 feet wide, the tiny shack on 15th Street in Beach Haven was technically 18 square feet smaller than his family’s house boat. But in true
Ironically, at the time that Sweeney and his family purchased the smallest house on Long Beach Island, the successful interior designer was commissioned to work on the largest home on the island—a mansion in Love Ladies whose 14 bathrooms had nothing on the shack’s then non-existent lavatory facilities (they later added in full plumbing with a 5’ x 6’ bath including a 3 square foot shower and basic kitchen accommodations). “But it really is amazing... how much you don’t need to be very, very happy,” smiles Thom; an underlying theme throughout any conversation with the charming and down-to-earth artist. But with serious limitations to space and functionality, Sweeney’s professional skills were unquestionably put to the test. The first thing Thom did was tear down the ceilings with hopes of adding much-needed height to the inside of the home. By utilizing the space all the way up to OPEN HOUSE MAGAZINE
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