330 Homes Summer 2021

d r e a m h o u s e

LAKE LANDING A couple finally gets the Portage Lakes house they’ve been wanting.

F or over three years, searched for properties right on the Portage Lakes. They’ve always been drawn to the lakes for boating and dining, and while they have lived nearby, they’ve never had a house at the water’s edge. Then they found the perfect 6,900-square-foot home on a 300-foot bend of Mud Lake and moved in during June 2018 with their goldendoodle, Finbar. “Where it was and everything really drew us to it,” Kevin says. “I wanted someplace that had privacy and park Kevin and Peggy Gaffney ing, which is hard to get on Portage Lakes.” With the three-bedroom, four bathroom house being on a double cul-de-sac lot and having a three-car garage, there’s plenty of room for their big families with kids and friends to visit.

The house did, however, show that it was built in 1983 with oak everywhere, pink carpet and tile in the owner’s bedroom and bath, a frosted window with a duck scene in a loft and carpeting in the great and dining rooms. They enlisted Green-based Shultz Design & Construction to remodel the basement and owner’s bedroom and bath in 2019. In the bedroom, they redid the fireplace in a stacked stone for a natural lakeside feel and expanded the walk-in closets with custom his and hers racks. Flooded with light from two existing skylights, the airy bathroom got new blue Amish-made, quartz-topped cabinets with gold hardware for a touch of warmth and a new custom walk-in tile shower with a wave mosaic. In the basement, a room with a broken-down hot tub got upgraded to a cigar lounge

and wine room — an idea Peggy got from a North Canton Parade of Homes tour that suited the couple, as they are wine club members and Kevin enjoys stogies. “We have our guys there to watch some football games, smoke a cigar,” Kevin says. The best part is they installed an Echols Heating & Air Conditioning ventilation sys tem, so there’s zero smell or smoke leakage. By February 2020, the Gaffneys had moved into a rental so Shultz’s team could return for an over haul of the main floor and upstairs. But construction revealed major hazards. “We found a significant dip in the floor and some undersized framing,” says Darren Shultz, vice presi dent of construction for Shultz. “It never had the proper support under it.”

3 3 O H OM E S s u mm e r 2 0 2 1

| 1 1