northern home & cottage
house and home
HOUSE OF MANY LIVES
AFTER A DEVASTATING HOUSE FIRE, HOMEOWNERS JIM AND JAN NORRIS BROUGHT IN THEIR ORIGINAL DESIGN-AND-BUILD TEAM TO REBUILD THE HOME—WITH AN ELEVATED NEW LOOK.
By ELIZABETH EDWARDS / Photos by JASON HULET
In the early 1980s, Jim and Jan Norris purchased a hundred-acre wood in the center of Leelanau County with views that roll out over forested hills all the way to Lake Leelanau and miles down the Lake Michigan coast. The couple took their time deciding when and what to build, enjoying the property for hiking in the meantime. Finally, around 2000, they turned to MAC Custom Homes to design and build a summer home situated to take in the sublime views from the top of the wooded ridge. Back then, Northern Michigan’s luxury custom-home scene was in its fledgling stages, but the company, founded by Mike Collings, was already breaking out as a leader.
Eight years later, after deciding to move their family to Northern Michigan full-time, the Norrises once again hired MAC Custom Homes to remodel and expand the house. This time they added two other Northern Michigan design teams to the mix: Mike and Angela Goodall, founders and principals of Kitchen Choreography, and Dorina Rudd of Design Strategies. In 2014 and again in 2018, the couple turned to the same crew for further home refreshes.
The Norrises were more than satisfied with their rustic farmhousestyle home when, on the first cold day of October 2020, Jim lit a fire in the great room hearth that ignited a chimney fire. The couple called the local fire department, and after scouring the home with detectors, firefighters pronounced it safe. Several hours later, however, the smoke alarms began screaming—and the couple opened the bedroom door to find the great room filled with smoke. Looking out the bedroom window, Jim could see the orange glow of the roof burning. The couple, their three dogs and pet bird made it out safely—just hours before the roof collapsed. What turned out to be a
Above: The custom-glazed white-oak kitchen cabinetry was all made by Symphony, a division of Kitchen Choreography. The black hood was custom fabricated by MAC Custom Homes. The countertops are Brittanicca Block Cambria Quartz.
Previous pages: The serene color palette allows the wooded view to take center stage. MAC Custom Homes constructed the stone fireplace and floating white-oak shelves. Interior Designer Dorina Rudd chose the classically modern furnishings.
seven-alarm fire ruined their home. Not only would the couple need to rebuild with winter coming on, but also they’d have to do it amid the shutdowns and slowdowns of the pandemic.
“It was not the time to build new relationships,” Jan says; they immediately contacted Kitchen Choreography, Design Strategies and MAC Custom Homes for their rebuild. Sadly, Mike Collings had since passed away, but the company is run by his former employees, Executive Builder (and now owner) Joe Colgrove and Executive Assistant Marcy Hurst. As for the other team members, the Goodalls of Kitchen Choreography and Dorina Rudd and her Design Strategies—their résumés brimmed with some of the finest designs in Northern Michigan.
The busy team worked seamlessly together to rebuild the home within the same footprint, but this time with a new classic modern look.
Above: The table in the cozy dining nook stretches to seat 20.
Below: Citron-colored bar stools make a playful color statement.
Above: Kitchen Choreography designed the handsome maple wet bar with its Villa B lack finish.
Below: Storage in the foyer matches the maple/Villa Black wet bar in the next room. The porcelain entry is perfect for muddy boots and paws—the Norrises have three dogs.
Gone was the dark woodwork and rustic peeled beams, and in came the soothing tones of light oak and maple in the flooring, beams and cabinetry, coupled with a leathered granite hearth, soft gray walls and furniture, and pops of citron green upholstery. In the kitchen, marble-veined Cambria countertops, black appliances and a handsome black custom range hood added more contrast. The monochromatic palette is the perfect backdrop for the Norris’ new art collection—one that has been carefully rebuilt since the fire.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about the execution was its efficiency. From top to bottom, the Norris’ new home was ready to move into in 20 months. “They all did an incredible job under very stressful circumstances,” Jan says. “The best part of the rebuild was the quality of craftsmanship, the teams we worked with and most of all: being home again.”
Above: The only change the couple made to the home’s former footprint was to knock out the bathroom wall to make more room for a soaking tub. The white-oak cabinetry is by Symphony.
Below: Both Jim’s desk (shown here) and Jan’s are custom made from white oak by Symphony.
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Builder: MAC Custom Homes Kitchen and Bath: Kitchen Choreography Interior Design: Design Strategies
house and home
SOMEWHERE IN TIME
By ELIZABETH EDWARDS / Photos by ANGELA DEWITT
Rick Turchetti has fond memories of spending time on sprawling, sparkling Crystal Lake as a child. When he and his wife, Kathy, began searching for a cottage Up North, he naturally gravitated to the Crystal Lake area. One July day in 2014, a listing popped up on his phone for a home on Platte Lake. “To be honest, I didn’t even know this lake existed because there’s a hill between Crystal Lake and Platte,” he says. He was intrigued—by both the 3.3-mile-long lake and the photos of the cottage on the listing. While it was clear the cottage had drawbacks (it wasn’t winterized and there were holding tanks), Rick was impressed by its extensive original woodwork.
As luck would have it, he and Kathy, who live in Grand Rapids, were visiting friends in the area, so they decided to pop by that day.
From the get-go, the cottage hardly looked promising. A mouse skittered across the floor as they entered, and once inside the tightly shuttered interior, Kathy spied another dead mouse on the fireplace mantel. “It was just stinky, dirty and claustrophobic,” she says.
Nevertheless, Rick found the woodwork was even more stunning than the photo had shown. The walls, ceilings and rafters were clad with clear (meaning completely free of knots) Douglas fir that was as smooth and unscathed as it had been when the cottage was built in 1927. Enamored as he was, Rick was pretty sure his wife would hate it. But Kathy has her own eye for vintage finds, one that began focusing through the dim light on original wicker furniture, Art Deco lamps and sconces, a cupboard full of
Depression glass—all in time-capsule condition.
Indeed, it was as if the Ohio banker who built the cottage a century ago had simply locked the door behind him on his last visit. In reality, however, the cottage, which stayed in the same family all those decades, had been used for at least several weeks a summer. But almost unbelievably, none of those descendants had ever changed anything, right down to allowing the small maple trees on the lakeside to
Top: Kathy’s one caveat for the small dark kitchen was that it needed to be brighter: “I have to have color,” she says. To that end, the couple installed the large window over the sink and Kathy picked out the bright period-correct Art Deco color palette. The range and lighting came with the cottage.
Below: The Turchettis’ eye for curating shines in the circa 1930s/40s covers of nature magazines the couple found in the cottage, had framed and then hung on the staircase wall. With its original wicker, woodwork and lighting, the cottage looks much as it has for a hundred years. It takes a sharp eye to see how the original casement windows are enclosed by new energy-efficient ones on the exterior. Previous spread: The yard is cleaned up, the deck replaced and the old overgrown maple tree removed to usher in a view of Platte Lake—nevertheless the cottage looks as though it has changed little over the last century.
Right: Rick built the bunks for the couple’s grandchildren, staining them an antique blue.
Below: The vanity table in the primary bedroom is original to the cottage.
While the Turchettis were able to use most of the standard beds that came with the cottage in other bedrooms, the old-fashioned double beds weren’t going to work for the 6-foot-tall Rick, so they replaced it with a new period-style king.
grow into monstrous specimens that, by the time the Turchettis toured the home, completely blocked the lake view—although the cottage is set just steps from the water.
The couple knew they had found a diamond in the rough and bought the cottage turnkey. And then began two years of clearing stuffed closets, opening boxes and cleaning, sorting and curating the seemingly endless array of contents. Gross stuff (and there was plenty) was tossed into a dumpster. The Douglas fir woodwork paneling was scrubbed with Murphy’s Oil Soap until it gleamed, as was the original one-inch-wide tongue-andgroove maple flooring. The windows— all original glass—were polished until
they shone. The Depression glass got a bath, too, before it was put back into its original cupboard. The couple culled the mountains of old tools in the garage and walk-up attic, then carted away what they couldn’t use. The wicker was cleaned up and kept, the Art Deco lighting re-wired and rehung, and the fireplace and chimney refurbished.
Along the way, the couple unearthed surprises both small and, well, huge. Among them, two Limbert (the once-upon-a-time competitor to Stickley) chairs, fishing gear dating to
the 1930s, and antique toys including a rare wind-up car sporting passengers Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd—tin versions of Edgar Bergen’s famous puppet pair. Exciting, but nothing matched the thrill of finding antique Navajo rugs on the floors, stacked in boxes and one still rolled in its original wrapping bearing its very vintage price tag of $380. The rugs were recently appraised for around $60,000.
The Turchettis more than appreciated the historical value of their new cottage. The problem: How could
Top: Serendipitously, the parlor sofa, which was the first piece of furniture the couple purchased after they were married, works perfectly in the cottage. The original cottage fireplace (not shown) sits across from it.
Bottom: The ingenious envelope of new construction over the old cottage means that the new exterior is almost identical to the original.
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they winterize it and bring the electrical and HVAC up to modern standards without totally gutting it?
After some head scratching and consulting with contractor David Kwekel of BDD Construction, Rick, an engineer, came up with the ingenious idea of framing it out and insulating from the outside and then covering it with an exact replica of the original exterior. Not only did this solution allow them to save all of the cottage’s interior woodwork, but this also meant the original windows and casements could remain intact. The new casement windows were simply installed over the old ones—the old ones still open in, while the new overlays open out.
Now finished, the home blends perfectly with the neighboring cottages, which date from the same era. It isn’t hard to imagine that old Ohio banker pulling up for a visit. Rick would offer him a cigar and then they’d get into all that vintage fishing equipment and probably some bourbon (Kathy would serve it in the Depression glass, of course) and who knows in what century they’d all end up.
Contractor: BDD Construction Cabinets and Countertops: Century Floors Windows: North Star Windows & Doors Paint: Benjamin Moore
