Katharine Hepburn’s getaway in Old Saybrook, Connecticut recently returned to the market. The current owner, a construction businessman, is asking $11.8 million; he purchased the property for $6 million in 2004, and attempted to sell it in 2011 for $28 million.

Hepburn had the Old Saybrook house built in 1939, as a link to her roots in nearby Hartford. The home was a lynchpin for the Hepburn family for decades; although the current house replaced the original, which washed away in a hurricane in 1938.

The brick home has been whitewashed, and the whitewash has been pleasingly worn away, although it’s difficult to know if the current owner engineered the coastal estate ‘look’ in the general renovations conducted on the home since he took ownership. The interior of the house has been entirely overhauled into a somewhat sterile representation of effortless charm.

Whitewash, blanched hardwood, and recessed lighting now prevail inside. The layout of the home has the wide-open, rambling quality of a prewar Eastern coastal estate house, simultaneously easygoing and aristocratic, unassuming but hiding an abiding formality. The renovations are generally tasteful enough, and for the most part manage to highlight the original style’s gentleness as they update, but seem just a little too self-conscious in execution. The foundation of the style remains, though, and its romantic quirks—and the manner in which it both enhances and reflects the surrounding landscape—are breathtaking.

The house measures about 8,000 square feet, and contains six bedrooms and 7.5 baths. It is situated on about 1.5 acres on a peninsula. The property exterior is spectacular, with landscaped gardens, white sand beaches, and sprawling lawns that extend toward the Atlantic horizon like an afternoon in early summer.

Hepburn took home four Oscars during a career which spanned more than sixty years.