SHADES OF GRAY

by TERRANCE GEESE

Terry and Julie Johnson discovered their love for Lake of Egypt in 2016 when they were visiting friends on the lake. The more often they visited, the deeper they fell in love. By 2019, couple from O’Fallon, IL, began a serious search to buy a lake home. Surging demand and prices surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic dictated overwise, and they decided their best option was to buy a lot and build their dream home. Johnson did not blindly enter the project, as he is a 38-year veteran commercial real estate broker and developer, the owner of Triple Net Management, Inc., and a broker with the Barber Murphy Group.

The result of the LOE project is a home of 4,500 square feet. It is a two-level home with five bedrooms, 3 ½ baths, and a 3-car attached garage. The home is located near the tip of the Peninsula at the center of the lake.

Perhaps because he is a talented commercial developer, Johnson was meticulous in developing the plans for the new family home. “I found a floor plan that I liked online, and then changed almost everything about it, except for the side entry. I had to tweak a lot of things,” Johnson said.

Johnson worked with Chris Sparks, an architect out of Carterville, but he was very hands-on in the planning. “I probably spent two months just making sure the anticipated furniture fit the floor plan,” he says. “You only have one shot at it.”

One challenge was the unique shape of the one-acre lot.

“It has narrow frontage on the street and widens out to 260 feet of lake frontage. So, I had to position the home a little bit differently to get it to fit,” Johnson says. “When you approach it from the street, I consider that to be the back of our house. I consider the front of the house facing the lake because far more people see it from the lake than from the street. Our house is a side-entry home, which is a little bit different.”

Aside from that, the home is most distinguishable by the color combination. “We refer to it as Shades of Gray. We love all the grays, charcoals, and whites. Even our dock, boat, and golf cart are white, gray, and black.” Inside, however, there are pops of mustard yellow, selected by his wife Julie.

The exterior of the home is covered on all four sides with LP Smartboard, an engineered type of wood made from wood fiber. The siding comes in a variety of colors, and the Johnsons selected a charcoal gray called Cavern Steel purchased from Rusty’s in Goreville.

Inside and out, you’ll find Fond-du-Lac stone from Wisconsin. The stone looks very natural but is man-made. “It’s unlike anything I had ever seen before,” Johnson says. “We fell in love with it because it went along with the home so well.” The way the Johnsons made use of it was so impressive that the company sent a photographer down from Wisconsin, and now the Johnson home is featured on the firm’s website and brochures. “I guess our home was the first home to use it everywhere – on the fireplace, the pillars, the outside bar and grill, and even the firepit.”

As you enter the home, you step into the great room, which contains the dining area, living room, and kitchen and is furnished with sleek contemporary furniture made by Zuri in Texas.

The home is built for visitors – and a lot of them. In the upstairs, there is a large master suite and an additional bedroom that serves as Johnson’s office. It has a pullout couch and is easily converted to a fifth bedroom. Downstairs are three bedrooms, two with king beds and one with two queen beds. Two of the bedrooms also have vanity sinks. The lower-level great room is a large open area that serves as a television-viewing area, an 8-top game table, and -- of great importance to Johnson – a pool table. There are four refrigerators, an ice maker, and a deep freezer, and there are seven separate areas to hang out, depending on the weather.

The exterior has a large partiallycovered deck, a hot tub, an outdoor bar and grill, and a fire pit – the latter two built by Shawnee Landscaping. The deck, with a cantilever roof, is a great spot for watching sunsets; below is a three-season sunroom with a contemporary gas firepit.

“ The lake view and the wildlife make it a dream come true living here. We have spotted a bobcat, otters, a bald eagle, deer, wild turkey, and a fox.” Julie Johnson has recently taken up birdwatching, with the help of an app that identifies bird calls and even calls back to them.

“ There are a lot of people coming here from the St. Louis and the Chicago areas. This is the premier lake, partly because it is in the Shawnee National Forest. There is a lot of appeal; there is an abundance of activities you can enjoy besides being on the lake – the bike and hiking trails, the wineries, and the new zipline course in Makanda. There is a lot to do down here”.

“I think that is one of the reasons we put so much time, effort and money into this place. We knew it was eventually going to be our permanent home. We didn’t think it would happen for a few more years, but we decided to sell our golf course home up in O’Fallon and move down here fulltime”.

“A lot of our friends from O’Fallon also have homes down here, and our kids are all spread out,” he says. “My kids went off to college and never came back. I have one in California, one in Chicago, and one in Vienna. And Julie’s son is at SIU-E. So, we travel a lot to see them.”

Johnson enjoys recounting to friends that he moved to Johnson County, which not only shares the family name but has its own Vienna as its county seat; the house construction even began at the same time that his daughter was moving to Vienna, Austria.

Continuing to serve his clientele has not been a problem since he has been working remotely since 2014, long before most even considered that possibility.

“It certainly became easier to tell people you work remotely after the pandemic,” he says, “and I can do about 75% of my work remotely.” Any given morning, you will find Johnson in his home office, reading the news and starting his day’s work.

Af ter working hours, you often will find Julie, a retired admin specialist, and Terry at work on remaining details of the home and grounds. “It’s been non-stop,” Johnson says. “It is not like construction stopped and now you are in your home, and it is done. It takes a couple of years to get a home completed, after the contractor has left the site.” The construction of the home took a year, and a second year has been devoted to terracing and landscaping.

Johnson was amazed that the area does not require any governmental oversight of construction like he is used to in other areas. “I found it to be very odd that

Johnson County or the City of Goreville does not have building codes and inspections. But we’ve taken a lot of steps to be compliant to minimum standards.”

Building remotely was a challenging task for the couple. Johnson often found himself making the 125-mile trip to the site twice a week, just to spend a couple of hours with his contractor and then drive back to O’Fallon. “Building remotely, you have to be pretty well organized,” he says. “You must have a lot of trust with your general contractor.”

The Johnsons had selected Jack Home Construction as the general contractor and have been very happy with the outcome. “But, in the end, it is up to the homeowner to figure out what they want and make sure everything is coming together. There’s the terracing, the landscaping, and figuring out how you are going to get down to the dock. Do you just put a stairway down to your dock, or do you put a cart path down there for a golf cart?”

They decided on a golf cart path that goes down to the dock and back up in a circle. “Golf carts are the preferred method of transportation when visiting friends in the neighborhood,” Johnson said, so they were already planning on having one.

And, at exactly 1/10 of a mile, the cart path serves a second purpose as a walking track – after ten times around, they know they’ve walked a mile.

Now that most of the work is done, Johnson looks forward to spending more time on the water. They have a pontoon boat and a two-person pedal kayak, and they plan to eventually acquire a fishing boat. “I used to crappie fish a lot with my father back in the day. I plan to get back into it at some point when I have a little more time on my hands.”

W hen the time arrives, the Johnsons are ready. They have a covered two-bay dock, designed in collaboration with Lake Egypt Dock Builders, with a dining area and a shed. “I wanted a shed to store everything in, and I included a refrigerator and bar top with a roll up window. I have dubbed the shed ‘The Office.’”

W hen he isn’t working in his actual home office, Terry and Julie enjoy sitting outside by the fire pit or dock and watching boats go by. “We’ll be waving to them. Some of them we know, most of them we don’t. On the lake, everybody waves at everybody,” he says. And the Johnsons like it that way. 