My Sliding Door: Windswept

It's been a while since I updated my Sliding Door Series and shared photos of a house currently for sale on Lake Superior.  I've been looking and, happily, I have yet to find a house (within our budget) that I love more than our little bungalow.  I've clicked on each new listing, with baited breath, hoping I won't find a house that would make me regret our rash decision to impulse buy this place.  But I'm still a poster girl for making snap decisions based on gut feelings.  We're still enamored with the lakehouse and have not found its equal.

Today's tour, though, is a phenomenally interesting place, currently priced at more than double what we paid for our little home.  This house is huge: just over 4500 square feet, with really striking architecture.  It's too much house for us, both in size and price, but if I had the cash I could happily turn this place into a real stunner.  It's begging for some mid-century inspired simplicity, with a dash of Scandinavian cool.  Furniture tailored to the scale and proportion of the room would be a must.  This would be the kind of home in which a person could take some gutsy design risks.

It was designed specifically for the location, to complement both the gardens and Lake Superior.  Behold, the incredible exterior:

The design is definitely striking and makes for a lot of cute nooks and crannies... 

...plus lots of spots from which to enjoy the view.

The interior makes me want to buy a lottery ticket so I could fund my secret desire to be a house-flipper.  The squashed pillows of the loveseat is making me sad.  He's just totally given up on life.

The dining room has a killer view, and room for a really medieval-sized dining table.  I think a large space can be just as challenging to decorate as a small one because scale is so important but it can be difficult to find the pieces to carry such a grand space. 

If this is an "updated" kitchen, I'm a curvy blond.  Telling me it's European won't make it any less 80s.  It's 80s European which negates any fanciness the European style lends it.  Painting the cabinets - both the melamine and wood accents - grey would be an easy and affordable fix.  Grey would complement the copper/bronze backsplash and help make the black granite (?) counters contrast less.  A total re-do would be ideal, but I don't think this kitchen is a total lost cause.
 

The sunroom, located off the living room, is definitely where I would log some serious hours thinking deep and important thoughts.  This room needs to be a library, with many leather-bound books.
 

This house has an atrium.
 

Something about the atrium, plus the stairs leading from the master bedroom, reminds me of the set of a horror movie in which the protagonist has plenty of places to elude the masked killer.  She'd flit about the house in her nightie, losing him in the convoluted floor plan, until she bumps right into the second knife-wielding killer.

The other three bedrooms are much less cinematic.
 

This spacious bathroom is killing me.  I think you could get a pretty good tan from the light fixture.  But the potential is too good!  So much space to work with and so much natural light.

Time for everyone's favorite dans le lakehouse drinking game!  There's a portal-type shower so everyone add a dash of Bailey's to your morning cuppa.  I'm starting to think maybe there was a tile prohibition in this city around 15-20 years ago.  Or maybe a grout drought? 
 

A bathroom with a killer balcony.  That's fancy.  I would paint this balcony charcoal grey (along with the rest of the wood on the exterior), and re-do the bathroom with very Scandinavian-inspired black, white, and pale grey finishes. With a teak vanity.  A tulip table and two teak chairs would be perfect out here, although I'm sure I'd never use them.

The basement is also huge, with an in-law suite and beautiful views.  Seriously - it's hard to believe this is a basement!
 

This house makes our little place seem boring, plus I'm a little worried about my prospects of eluding a killer.  I need a secret hatch in the bedroom.  How long would it take me to tunnel my way to the garage?  On the bright side if we had bought this beauty, with it's mind-boggling floor plan and endless, gargantuan rooms, I'd have spent the best years of my life painting out miles and miles of wood trim.

My Sliding Door: Closer to Home

Finally!  A lake home for sale that is within our price range.  Let's compare apples to apples, with this 35 year old home on a bay of Lake Superior.  This home is a couple hundred square feet larger than ours.  It has four bedrooms, only one three piece bathroom, but 1.8 acres (way more land than us!).  It's priced about $20-25,000 more than what we paid for our place, so this definitely would have been on our list of homes to tour, were we shopping for a lakehouse now.

It's a cutie!!  Looks like it has a lot of windows - must be bright inside.  It has a similar style to our place, and - I'm not gonna lie - I'm digging the wheel.  Paint that sucker turquoise and I'm all over it.

Uh-oh.  Red flag: the upholstered chairs used outside instantly lend a "Winter's Bone" kind of feel to the house . . .

Is there such a thing as a not-nice lake view?  Another great view, framed by forest.  So much property!

I think I made a mistake titling the last tour "prepare to pine," because that would have been more appropriate, and oh so pun-ny, here.  That is a lot of wood and I'm exhausted just thinking about painting it all.  I have to admit, though, that painted white I think I would really dig the texture, especially the diagonally installed boards.  I'd go full-on cottage cute here.  And I'd have bought those damn lobster buoys.  And not to put on my lobster traps, either.

Is the television trying to get away?

How many trees died for these walls?!?  That is just SO much wood. With the wood floors, walls, and ceilings this feels like a giant coffin, as-is.  There is an urgent need for paint here.

Something is wrong with me, because I'm totally digging these cupboards . . .  Help, I need an intervention.  My taste is veering very cottagey these days and I need to recalibrate it to get back to my mid-century mod plan.  But those cabinets - so twee!  Picture them with a cute, turquoise, vintage-inspired light (like this one, which happens to be a DIY).  A black and white checkered floor would be perfect (or maybe a deep blue marmoleum?) and, if those are real wood counters (ironically, I think they aren't), I'd stain them a deep walnut or a creamy white like ours. 

The eat-in kitchen nook is nice to have but, like so much of this house, it's so dark, despite having large windows!!  Whoever buys this will need a milk truck filled with primer and paint, and they should just pump it right in through the windows.  

This bedroom has a real Bates Motel feel about it.  That carpet is murderously awful. 

At a minimum this room is crying out for a lick of paint, although new drywall would be best with a calm colour.  I'd break out of my all-white habit and choose a blue-tinted grey, which can be paired with creamy, all-white bedding (ha ha - fooled you!) and a vintage wrought iron bed, navy.  Some nautical-inspired striped decor would be a sweet touch.  Obviously the offensive carpet needs to go.  So much potential here, but even I'm struggling to see past the prison-inspired brick wall.

Even turquoise curtains can't cheery up this dark paneled room.  Beep, beep, beep - that's the paint tanker I ordered.  This carpet almost looks good compared to the photo above, but I'd scrap it right away.

This doesn't count for our drinking game, but I'm putting a shot of Bailey's in my morning coffee anyway.  I have an oogie feeling that this "wall covering" is faux-parquet linoleum flooring . . . In a pinch, I could paint the vanity grey or navy, live with the flooring if I had to (or spring for a pretty slate), and install inexpensive white subway tile.  

The pine is listed as a selling feature for this house.  Okay.  We just put up paneling, so I can't say I don't see potential.  The pine wood has been installed quite nicely and, painted a bright white, it would have incredible texture.  In this house, I'd totally go with a coastal, nautical feel - maybe even with a hint of rustic.  The bedrooms need a lot more work than the living areas, although paint could do in a pinch.  But I'm convinced that a happy marriage needs two washrooms because the times that I really have to go are when Hubby's taking his sweet-bippy time in our bathroom.  Our second toilet keeps me sane (and is great for guests) - but it's a step down from our three-toilet townhouse!  A one bathroom house would lead to a lot more yelling.  I wouldn't want to swap our place for this one (although the extra land is fabulous), but I can't say this place is horribly disappointing.  If this were one of our only options, I could make this fabulous.  So we're still happy with our decision to take the plunge and buy our lakehouse, as opposed to sticking to the plan and house-shopping now, but this was an interesting comparison and not completely disappointing.

Speaking of our place, we really picked up the pace and the kitchen is DONE!!  I'm lying, but as you read this, Hubby and I are nailing in some last-minute trim pieces so we're so close to being done.  I hope to snap some photos and share the full tour this week, along with the details about how we finished off the paneling and how we addressed the shelf issue.  I just need some time alone with my Pyrex collection first.  We've been apart for so long.

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My Sliding Door: Prepare to Pine

Get ready to salivate over today's tour.  It's so good, I'm even game for a trade - something not even the million dollar one had me dreaming about.

The point of this series is to take a look at "what could have been," if Hubby and I hadn't dove, head first, into the lakehouse purchase, but had instead dug in our heels and waited until the timing was right for us.  This series peeks inside homes on Lake Superior that are for sale now, which is when we had thought we'd be selling the townhouse and moving lakeside.  So far, it looks like we made the right decision.  Even though today's home is certainly gorgeous, it's nearly double the price of our home.  Here's the tour, along with the commentary I blurted out the first time I laid my eyes on these stunning rooms.

Whoa, this place is huge.  That deck and dock are incredible.  Look how solid they are!!  Why is our dock so janky?

I could definitely park my butt on this beach all summer.  

I think the hardwood floor with slate tile runner is a little odd, but genius.  What a brilliant way to preserve the flooring by the entrance, without having to give up hardwood flooring completely.  But why, oh why, did they swag that light?!?

This is my dream living room!!!  This is literally the living room I have designed in my head!!!  Look, it's got TWO sitting areas: one planted in front of the tube (for catching up on Game of Thrones), and another beside the window, for lake-watching and s'mores-making in front of a roaring fire.  I hate that to watch our television, we had to position our sofa with it's back to the view.  Arg, I love this, it's perfect.  And that fireplace is beautiful as-is, no laborious brick painting required.

AND it has a dream kitchen?!?  This is just not fair.  Look at this kitchen: it's modern, but quietly elegant and sure to remain timeless.  The giant windows and stainless appliances are just icing.  Who in this city even has taste this modern?!?  I'd like to be their friend.  Never mind, I'd be too jealous of their kitchen.  I can't think of a single thing wrong with it.  I'd swap out the light fixture (why swag it?) and add some colour, but everything is just so lovely here.

In what looks like a custom home, why the need to swag so much?

They lost me with the ceiling fan.

What the heck, is this just a bonus sitting area with another crazy-good lake view?!?  I love this kind of view because it makes me feel like I'm actually in the water.  They really need a sleek white built-in bookcase and a comfy reading chair (or two).  It's wasted as it is right now.

Are those slate floors?  I covet slate floors.  The vanity lacks storage, but it isn't made of 80s oak, so it's a win!  What's with the fake flowers and bird cage?

I'm drooling over the slate-tiled walk-in shower.  The beadboard is also pretty, and the hooks on an old barn board are a cute, rustic touch that I don't even mind.  I'll ditch all of my mid-century mod and totally embrace modern rustic to live here.

Why does the second bathroom have such a different style?  This might be a vintage dresser turned into a vanity and, if so, that's a fun idea.  But I wish the other bathroom had a similar vanity because otherwise it makes it look like things came from the clearance section.  But hey, not oak.

Hold up. 

Is that a freaking plastic tub surround?  In a house this modern and chic?  Someone in this city is making a killing selling these. 

Hey, genius idea friends: shall we turn this into a drinking game?  Every time we see a plastic tub surround in a lakehouse tour we add a shot of Bailey's to our morning coffee.



Awesome bedroom with awesome view.

Second bedroom:

Third bedroom, with the tidiest baby in the world:

I'm not really a basement-dweller, so basements aren't how I get my jollies.  This one seems a little meh (drop ceilings?), but I have a crawl space that's five feet tall (we move around on wheelie chairs down there), so I really can't throw stones.  The drape behind the wood stove feels like a bad idea, but everything else seems just fine.  You can stand upright in it, so yay.

All of the commentary above was accompanied by enthusiastic shoulder-punching of the poor soul who first viewed these photos with me.  I got really worked up about this place - it's just SO good, and so unlike any other home I've seen for sale in the area, lakeside or not.

Do you love it? 

It just SOLD!  2200 square feet, .75 acres, three bedrooms, two full baths and one powder room, central audio system (!!!), and only twenty minutes from the city.  Sigh.  Our guess is that this home belonged to one of the many NHL hockey players Thunder Bay has produced, but we're only basing this guess on the homemade lake ice rink for the wee ones.

Hopefully next time I can show you something in our price range.  But the way things are looking, it might be an airstream trailer parked on a ravine.  I just read an article about the Canadian housing market and, according to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the housing market will continue to slow and the average home price in Canada will rise just 3.5% in 2014, and 1.6% in 2015.  Some of the sharpest declines will be seen in large urban areas like Toronto.  But in Thunder Bay, this weird little anomaly of a two-horse town, a 6.5% increase in housing prices is expected for 2014, and 4.9 is expected in 2015.  We'll continue to experience a listing shortage here for the foreseeable future.

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