330 Homes Spring 2022

s p a c e l i f t | d r e a m h o u s e | f r e s h d e s i g n

by LYNNE THOMPSON photos by PIXEL PERFECT PHOTOGRAPHY

CRYSTAL COTTAGE A dilapidated fishing cabin is transformed.

T im Carr and Cindy Bach remember the first time they saw the house that would become their Portage Lakes home. The floor in the original 1925 fishing cabin sagged as much as 2 1/2 inches in some places — if it remained at all. “When you opened up the front door and looked down, you saw the basement,” Bach recalls. Additions had created an odd layout that put a den and three-season room on the lower level. “Nothing was square, noth ing was level,” Carr says. “It was a mess.” But Carr and Bach were unfazed. As the owners of Akron-based Lakefront Excavating, they were used to houses that needed a lot of work, and this one was located on approximately 90 feet of Turkeyfoot

Channel. The location appealed to the couple — they had spent many sum mer days on the Portage Lakes in their pontoon boat. Over the next nine months, they gutted the house and, with the help of Akron-based Shultz Design & Construction, transformed the dilapidated house into a three-bedroom, three-bath home with the space to comfortably host up to 100 guests in a post COVID world. The transformation began with Lakefront Excavating demolishing the three season room. Shultz Design & Construction replaced it with an addition consisting of a first-floor great room and deck over a lower-level outdoor living room. The couple credits design coor dinator Sarah Linerode with helping them settle on siding the house in a white vinyl

lap with vinyl shake-shingle detailing at the waterfront gable peaks to begin creat ing the Northeast coastal cottage look they desired. Lakefront Excavating con structed barn stone walls to retain flagstone terraces built in the backyard. A sailboat converted into a bar table was docked on the upper terrace, while a gas fire pit fashioned from a drilled-out piece of sand stone was installed on the lower counterpart. Inside, painters coated the kitchen, great room and dining area walls in Sherwin Williams’ Sandbar, a pale tan that sets off white quartz topped cabinetry and a weathered marble-tile back splash. “The mortaring really mimics rope,” Linerode notes. Carr suggested painting the island in Benjamin Moore’s slate-blue Van Deusen hue.

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