The elegant symmetry of this lakeside estate is the centerpiece of a legacy camp that will house generations of family and friends. Melding custom timbers and metalwork, the home celebrates both strength and warmth. Centered around a substantial stone fireplace and towering window wall, there are ample views of the water and woods waiting to be discovered in every nook in the house.
The homeowner recalls, “I've always loved timber framing. My better half, Brian, has been out west and loved the style, look, and feel of the Colorado Mountain Lodge. When we decided to build, being in such a beautiful area in Northern Michigan, we thought, ‘oh, a timber frame would be a perfect fit for that kind of feel’, where it's majestic, but it's warm and it's cozy.
We’ve been on the lake for decades. So, it’s really a kind of family compound. I have memories of the lake since I was five. I’ve got 29 first cousins, so we have a really large family. My cousins would come up every summer, and we would have obstacle courses on the beach and skiing, tubing, and campfires at night and really just a lot of good family bonding time.”
The formative family times spent on the property became the blueprint for the homeowner’s desire to create a thoughtful rearrangement of the grounds. With a bit of patience and ingenuity the vision came into focus for an expansive property that would include the parent’s cottage, the homeowners new build, and the connecting land that ties the entire complex together.
The homeowner continues, “My parents place, which is next door, was on a 50ft frontage lot, and we bought the lot to the west of them, which was 75ft. I had done an initial design on that line, and then the lot on the east side of their place became available.
That lot had 100ft of frontage and a cottage. So, we kind of took a pause, and then reconfigured the size, space, and the cottage. What we ended up doing, though, was merging the 100ft lot with my parents 50ft original lot because of the building constraints and got exactly the lot that we wanted.
Then we moved their cottage. We shifted it to the west about 60ft, and to the 75ft lot that we bought initially to build our cottage. Now, we’ve got the green space in between the two cottages where we can play croquet, and we have the beach there for the fire pit. We reconfigured the whole site plan, to both maintain and keep my parents place, which when we moved it, ended up getting a little addition on the back so that it became a three bedroom, three and a half baths, with a new laundry room and new pantry for my parents. They've got kind of a renovated space and then we have our new “cottage,”, the second one, on the part of land to the east of theirs.”
Bringing together the homeowners design dreams, with an attentive architect, and New Energy Works timber frame craftspeople, a collaboration crystalized the grand residence into something beyond their expectations.
“We had two architectural entities designing, because some of it's the timber frame and some of it is traditional framing. So, it was kind of a design triangle. Three of us, you know, collaborating. The real intent and the primary design elements that were important to me were a lot of natural light and the sightlines, like when you walk in the door from the roadside, and why we did the floating staircase, I didn't want a stringer blocking views. There were some complexities from a design standpoint because I wanted you to walk in and be able to see all the way through with a focus on the lake. Symmetry, perspective, and scale, was really important to me.
When we began the process, we were living in Massachusetts. I had an architect there, Chris O'Connell. In fact, what we ended up doing, because I did the initial floor plan layout there, was when we moved from Massachusetts to Michigan, was to get Chris involved.
I'm a mechanical engineer by trade. For me, from an engineering standpoint, I loved it. I loved designing it. You know, having the New Energy Works guys during Covid, which was another complexity, come and do the install and just the fascination of how it all came together physically, was amazing.”
How it came together was the perfect combination of high craft elegance and rustic comfortability. The cottage spotlights wide spans, curved timbers, and sight lines tailor made for enjoying the lake front with family and friends. A beautiful partnership that that paid dividends and became an expansive representation of love and family. With a towering stone fireplace at its heart and memories to be made around it, the legacy house is now an enduring home.
The homeowner concludes, “Now it’s like a family compound, where we have lots of outdoor space and with the two cottages next to each other, tons of sleeping space. I think we can get 32 people in bed and not with mattresses on the floor, but literally in bed. We have a lot of capacity.
This will be forever in the family, never sell it, generational longevity home. We'll be there forever. My kids love it and they're like, ‘Mom, our kids are going to be here.’ Which is why we built such a big place, because we knew what it was going to become. As generations go on, everybody expands, and you need a lot of space.”
Partners:
Architect: Christopher O'Connell Associates
Builder: Mark Priest Builders, LLC,
