Captain Sawyer’s Bed & Breakfast in Boothbay Harbor has been through a few changes over the years.

Formerly Captain Sawyer's Place Bed and Breakfast, owned by Kim Reed-Upham, and long before that a sea captain’s home, the property and business were purchased by Jo Moore on Jan. 10. With a lot of help from her friends, she started extensive renovations in February.

Moore, the youngest of 11 children who grew up in West Palm Beach, Florida, said that when she bought the inn, she began thinking about a redesign.

Close friend Sarah Kreger, who owns an interior design business in Orlando, Florida, and her husband, Jeff, along with local lobsterman and friend Maynard Brewer, helped Moore scrape, paint, update and redecorate the entire interior of the inn, including nine guest rooms and bathrooms, the kitchen, dining area and decks.

Moore said Kreger was invaluable in helping with decisions about colors, and hands-on labor, during the renovations. Now the ceilings are white and the walls are shades of white and pale grays. “It was very dark in here,” Moore said. “We just wanted to make it light and bright.”

The nine guest rooms, each named after an old Maine schooner or windjammer, have signs on the doors. There’s the Lewis R. French room, which needed the most work, Moore said, and other rooms named Roseway, Eastwind, Novelty and Mary Day.

One of the larger guest rooms, the Captain's Quarters, on the second floor, has a private entrance and features its own deck overlooking the harbor, with an ocean breeze and views out to Squirrel Island.

The charming old radiators were painted white, making them even more charming, and carpeting and plywood was ripped up to expose the original 1800s wood floors, which have been sanded and refinished or whitewashed.

Some of the unique, original features, like a brass doorknob that was stripped of layers of old paint to reveal the molded design underneath, and brass embellished steps that lead to the basement, have been or are being restored and polished to bring out their original beauty.

Jeff Dowdy, a great-great-grandson of Captain Sawyer, owns Sawyer’s Way Auction Company in Edgecomb. He went to the inn last winter to meet Moore, and together they went down to the basement to see what might be hidden there. Moore said Dowdy discovered a few treasures.

“He came here to look around, and when he went digging in the back of the basement he found an old sled from the 1800s in pristine condition.” Upon further digging, Dowdy discovered a rocking chair with a leather seat, and a white wicker one with curved arm rests.

In another area in the basement they found some candles, matches and a table with puddles of old candle wax. “There was even a makeshift doll's bed,” Moore said in a Facebook post.

Most of the antique poster beds were in place when she bought the inn, but much of the other furniture was purchased from Sawyer’s Auction House.

Then there’s the breakfast part of “bed and breakfast.” Moore whips up pastries worthy of a top-notch bakery for guests to munch on while she prepares a full breakfast. Her daughter, a chef-sommelier who graduated from Escoffier in Boulder, Colorado, came up last winter to give her a lesson in preparing food for a number of guests in a timely manner. “I’m the youngest of 11, so cooking for a lot of people came naturally. I’ve always cooked, but she brought it up a few notches.”

Pampering and caring for people comes naturally to Moore. Before moving to Boothbay Harbor, she worked in a cardiac unit in Orlando. She was on duty on June 12, 2016 when the Pulse nightclub shooting massacre occurred. “That’s the main reason I moved up here. It was traumatizing,” she said. “I can still hear the helicopters flying around, waking me up. I spent that whole weekend at the hospital.” As a result of the shootings, 49 people died and 58 were wounded.

Moore came here to try to regain some peace of mind, and spend some time with her sister and brother-in-law, Marge and Alan Firpo, new owners of Smuggler’s Cove Inn in East Boothbay.

She liked it so much, she came back to stay. “I fell in love with the area and the people.”

Captain Sawyer’s Bed & Breakfast, at 55 Commercial Street, will be open until Christmas. Call (207) 633-2290.