Downtime
on Walloon Lake By Sheri McWhirter • Photography by G. Randall Goss
T
he Kelly family spends its downtime at Downtime. A beautiful, log cabin-style cottage on Walloon Lake provides the backdrop for the Cincinnati family’s retreat home in Northern Michigan, a lake where both Julie and Jim Kelly have annually spent summers since childhood. But the days of rental cabins are gone and the Kellys now own a classic, hilltop cottage with a shimmering daytime view of the blue waters below. “We saw this window and we were sold. It was the ‘wow’ moment,” Julie said while standing in her cottage living room, looking down at the lake. “We were sold on the view. It’s bright and cheery.” The Kellys and their four children are frequently at their lakeside cottage, whether to play in the summertime water or downhill ski at nearby resorts in the winter months. The place is all about playing, relaxing and getting away from their busy city lives. “In the summer it’s about being on the lake and wakeboarding, but we like the skiing, too. Our heart is in Walloon, for sure. We don’t have to twist arms to come here,” Julie said. “You can hang in your bathing suit all day, don’t have to get dressed up. It’s just so chill here, so laid back — we love it.” There’s just one rule that is strictly enforced at the Kellys’ retreat home. No mobile phones can be used in the shared family space, a regulation that primarily impacts the Kellys’ adult or teenage children. All calls must be made or received either in their bedrooms or outdoors, Julie said. “That’s Jim’s rule and we like it,” she said. Jim said the cottage is meant to provide
family time with stunning scenery. “It’s the beauty and the water,” he said. Julie said she decorated the cottage through her own bargain shopping adventures. Much of the furniture, decorative pillows and linens came from outlet mall stores, though the beds were purchased with the home. “I really wanted it comfortable for the kids. You know, no fuss. I went with neutrals and colored stripes,” she said. The living room features neutral colors, with bright stripes on throw pillows and such, all centered around a large fieldstone hearth. The tidy space also carries a birch bark theme with decorative candles and two living birch trees just outside the two large, south-facing bay windows, which flood the room with natural light through-
out the day. The kitchen is completely redesigned from the cottage’s original layout. The kitchen and laundry room swapped spots in the recent renovation by Young and Meathe, of Petoskey. “The kitchen was hidden and you had no view from where it was,” said David Faulkner, the company’s project supervisor for the cottage renovation. Now the cottage boasts a large, spacious kitchen with an island in the center. The sink is tucked into a corner of the room, a layout choice to allow for the island, Faulkner said. One thing that didn’t change in the kitchen is the original pantry, complete with an old, wooden door. “It was kind of cute the way it was,” Faulkner said. HOMelife 17