This Family Friendly Waterfront Home Is Brimming with Nostalgia

Watson: These clients were raised in this northern-Michigan community, and their parents still live in the area. It’s a late-19th-century enclave of white clapboard houses in a mix of Edwardian, Victorian, Carpenter Gothic, and Shingle styles. The homes are very Midwestern — fresh, summery, no-nonsense — and have been added onto over the years.

And the homeowners?

Watson: They’re a couple in their early fifties. Between them, they have five children, who have lots of friends. They live in Missouri year-round and had a nostalgic vision of owning a vacation home far away from cell phones and the digital world. They pictured a house with puzzles on the card table and a screen door that would slap shut with that aural echo of the past.

But this house is newer, right?

Watson: They tried but couldn’t find just the right old house. Then they discovered this 15-year-old Shingle Style house right on Lake Michigan, which is a body of water as clean, clear, and beautifully blue-green as you could possibly want. Every room in this house has an amazing view. You feel like you’re on the upper deck of a ship.

Your decorating here looks a bit Swedish to me — soft and lyrical.

Watson: It feels like northern Europe in this part of Michigan, where forests of pine and white birch reach all the way down to the water. It makes sense because a lot of Europeans from Scandinavia and Germany built houses when they arrived here decades ago. We wanted to reinforce those cultural roots but also make this home quintessentially American. Initially, it had darker rooms and, believe it or not, a Swiss Alps ski-lodge feeling. To make it more breezy and lighthearted, Louis XV limestone mantels were replaced with less-heavy Victorian Eastlake-style ones. We added beadboard paneling to almost every room. Dark-wood floors were swapped for white-pine ones.

How else do you make a very large house feel friendly?

Reid: You use a lot of handmade things that show love and care, along with tactile fabrics and surfaces. The dining room’s wallpaper reminds me of my girlhood in the Lake District of England. It’s an updated Morris & Co. print. The hand-blocked pattern is warm, while the ivory background keeps it airy. I’m obsessed with it!

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