330 Homes Summer 2021

d r e a m h o u s e

To remedy it, they cut into the new cigar lounge and the home’s slab foundation and added new footing with steel columns to jack up and support the struc ture. They then resealed the lounge. Another hurdle came after a stormy night when the team noticed water leak ing from the great room windows and soaking the carpet. “We started tak ing off siding and … find ing massive rot all over the outside of the house,” Shultz says. The Gaffneys agreed to have nearly all of the win dows and doors replaced

and the siding redone in a slightly darker James Hardie fiber cement sid ing. Installing larger floor to-ceiling windows with darker exterior frames woke up the previously dim great room. They replaced nearly all the first-floor flooring with white oak for a light, cohesive look. The previously heavy oak three-story foyer staircase got thinned out as a stair case with custom-fabri cated, powder-coated iron steel railings topped with oak by Finelli Architectural Iron & Stairs in Solon.

“The outside of the home is the modern aesthetic. We wanted to try to bring some of that inside,” Shultz says. Up the stairs leads to a catwalk connected to the loft, where a wall got knocked down to turn it into an open, brighter area. Down the stairs leads to the basement, with the cigar lounge, a koi pond and bridge, a conversation pit and a sunken bar. Designers kept that mod ern look in mind when reworking the black-and gold hearth fireplace in the great room. With the fire place stretching two sto ries, it needed to be subtle. The answer was hard coat

stucco with a linear gas fireplace accented by an elegant gold chandelier and pairings of burnt orange and royal blue statement chairs. The step-up dining room got a face-lift with a stun ning live-edge marble Arhaus table and an Amish made wet bar, topped with live-edge Cambria quartz, to match. But the view from the larger windows outshines all the finery. “We see the sunrise. And the sunset is unbelievable,” Kevin says. “All the reflec tions coming from behind us on the house across the lake is so cool.”

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