ROOM WITH A VIEW

MICHAEL BARNUM FOUND HIS "HOTEL room on the water," as he calls his tiny Provincetown getaway, quite by accident. He had been looking to buy a condominium in Boston, when during a visit to his dentist, she mentioned she was selling her place on the bay in Provincetown.

"She said, 'You really ought to go look at it; you spend so much time down there,' " recalls Barnum. A few days later, his father's admonition - "How could you think of buying a vacation place when you don't own a home yet?" - echoing in his head, he drove to the Cape to check it out.

Experiencing that warm June evening on the deck of the two-room unit was all it took to convince him to buy. "So what if I put the cart before the horse," he says. "It was a great investment."

Barnum, an interior designer whose firm, Barnum + Company, is in Boston's South End, says: "Great design is timeless. But, like people and fashion, it needs freshening up from time to time." And his new space needed "major freshening up." Given the tight quarters - the living space is 10 by 21 feet- the updating also required absolute adherence to a form-follows-function mantra. "Every inch needed to do a job," says Barnum, "but that did not mean it couldn't look great."

He spent that first summer contemplating how to make the space work easily and efficiently. His solution: Remove the interior walls and gut the condo to the rafters. That meant he had to install new structural ties, which he placed as high as he could while still maintaining stability.

"That was the single best thing I could have done," he says. "I rewired the entire place and added two additional windows to further open the space. It's all about the views of the harbor and beach, and I wanted to be able to view the magnificent P-town monument from the sofa."

Barnum redesigned the kitchen - essentially one wall of the unit - replacing the gas stove with an Advantium microwave and halogen oven. He installed a dishwasher drawer under a new glass two-burner cooktop and replaced the under-counter refrigerator with a full-height 24-inch-wide, 24-inch-deep European model. "After all," he says, "when at the beach, it is mostly about beverages and ice. The small refrigerator proved to be very inadequate."

New white-laminate IKEA cabinets reach to ceiling height to maximize storage space. The base cabinets are finished with a countertop of Caesar-Stone, a composite quartz product that is tougher than granite, impervious to stains, and looks like terrazzo. A stepladder, a must for reaching high storage areas, is just 4 inches wide when closed and fits into a custom slot next to the fridge.

Barnum installed acrylic-injected white cork flooring throughout the unit. "It's so easy to clean," he says, "and doesn't show the sand."

In the sleeping area, Barnum designed a Murphy bed with built-in storage and pullout night tables. "When the bed is down, it is tight," concedes Barnum. "But when the bed is up, the room is quite spacious, and there is space for the two folding lounge chairs when cool nights limit sitting out on the deck."

Picking up on the blue of the water and sky, Barnum installed floor-to-ceiling blue-glass mosaic tile in the 3-by-10-foot bathroom. That allowed him to eliminate the 3-by-3-foot shower stall in favor of an open shower. "Anything can get wet and who cares," he says.

A custom-designed storage cabinet in the bathroom holds toiletries and towels, and its mirrored doors visually open the narrow room. In an innovative twist, an oval mirror hangs above the sink in front of a large window, allowing him to take in the view of the beach while brushing his teeth.

In the living area, a convertible sleep sofa is set off by an oak sideboard that Barnum designed. The cerused finish - achieved by applying paint, then wiping it from the surface, leaving enough to highlight the wood grain - matches the built-ins in the bedroom area. The sideboard is a versatile piece: It houses a stereo, clothing, extra utensils, and a rollout ottoman, and its pullout shelf can serve as a table. Above, a flat-screen television hangs on the wall.

Barnum painted the walls white, which, he says, makes the space seem larger and offers a neutral background for his bright blue and green folding chairs and pillows and sheer periwinkle curtains.

"Provincetown is a destination," he says. "One does not just happen into Provincetown; one takes the time to visit." And when the visit is over, "I turn the key and get on the ferry back to Boston. What more do you really need?"

Jeffrey Osborne is a Boston designer and freelance writer. E-mail him at josborne@southenddesigngroup.com.