S P R I N G 2 0 2 2 | C O N N E C T E D T O WAT E R
Making Magic Best friends collaborate on enchanting Livingston County island home By Tracy Donohue Photography by Texture Photography
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n her two decades of designing homes, Dawn Jacobs has taken on a range of interesting and memorable projects. As principal designer and owner of Artichoke Interiors, Jacobs runs a fullservice interior design firm as well as a retail storefront studio and showroom in charming downtown Holly. When she was offered a unique project involving a summer lakefront escape on an island with multiple buildings and a complex elevation, she readily accepted. Fortunately, this particular project had a fun twist because the clients were her decades-long best friend, Patricia (Patsy) Prose, and her husband. “Patsy was very involved in the project,” Jacobs says. “She’s gone through many construction projects at many homes before, so she
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wasn’t overwhelmed. We shopped together for everything from fabrics to knobs. It was easy, due to our friendship, and enjoyable for both of us.” According to Prose, her husband previously lived across the lake and had long had his eye on this one-of-a-kind waterfront property with a soaring 80-foot hill. When it became available, he bought it. “There was a big house on the property that was tired and a tear-down. We wanted to replace it with something authentic and beautiful, with a natural look.” The secluded property, nearly 2 acres in size, is the only residential property on Treasure Island, an 80-acre island surrounded by Halfmoon Lake and Blind Lake in Gregory, in Livingston County. The biggest challenges in what became a five-year project had to do with the architecture and the elevation. The homeowners hired DesRosiers Architects, based in Bloomfield Hills. Prose notes,“What Lou DesRosiers and his team created here is magical.” The couple lived on-site in an Airstream trailer during the summer months of construction, so they were able to observe much of the process. Both pages, clockwise from upper left: The Prose’s husband marveled at the “exboathouse — with a traordinary work” of the excavating crew second-floor guest during all stages of building into the hill, house — and main-home which involved sheet pilings and an engigathering spaces all boast neered retaining wall created with two-ton wonderful adornments blocks. Limited space to work on such an and furnishings that make extensive undertaking was also a formilakeside living comfortable dable factor. The project was completed in for the homeowners. 2019.
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