Outdoor Facelift! Lakeside Renovations Underway!

Laura and I are lake babies of sorts. Our dad was an avid sailor and our family piled into the old conversion van every weekend of the summer and made the pilgrimage to Northern Michigan to be on the water. 

This is our family sailing somewhere on Grand Traverse Bay. And yes, that is my dad looking like Crockett and Tubbs from Miami Vice should be chasing us! Ah, the 80s!

My husband also grew up on lakes around the northern Indiana area, so we always knew that the lake experience was something we wanted our kids to have as well.

We bought our lake house together the summer before we got married and it has been a work in progress for the last 10 years. We have redone most of the interior, but the cosmetic exterior has always been last on the list of things to update. We've done many of the things that you have to do to maintain the exterior. . . new roof, fresh paint, etc. But now it's time to do some of the fun stuff! 

Here is where we are starting from. We like to call it our box with a crooked triangle on the top. Another casualty of the 80s! 

We wanted to make the place look more symmetrical and "cottagey" without tearing the roof off and starting over. We also have two sliding doors on the bottom, lakeside level. The right side is a bedroom and the left side is a small living room and bar. It has never made sense to us to enter and exit through a bedroom, so we wanted to replace that slider with a window and make the actual entrance more prominent. From this wish list here is what our builder came up with. . . 

And here is the best part - the entire front is a facia. We don't have to tear into the actual roof line. The facia will correct the roof line from the front and most visible side of the house without any major construction to the existing roof. This is a slightly different rendering but you can see the facia. 

Our other plan is to update the landscaping. We live outside and we use our place pretty consistently from early spring to late fall. These are both great times of the year for evening bonfires so we wanted to incorporate a fire pit and more outdoor lounging space. Here is the direction we are taking. 

We plan to have the existing patio stamped with an overlay. Here are some of the options I like so far. 

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And then we will add natural flagstone around the firepit. 

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Renovations are starting at the end of this month. Stay tuned to the progress along the way!

{Erin}