ARTS & CRAFTS DO-OVER

With generous living space yet a focus on the outdoors, an undistinguished cottage is rebuilt in the Craftsman tradition.

- Joel & Karen Cohn

The lakeside lot was gorgeous, but the house on it “had all the charm of the mid-1980s tract house that it was,” as our builder, Todd Wright, put it. We live near Boyne City on Michigan’s Lake Charlevoix, which connects to Lake Michigan. Building was active here during the Craftsman era. Charlevoix had Earl Young, an American architectural designer with no formal training, who mastered the use of stone and curved lines, seen in his distinctive “mushroom” houses. He focused on building small houses that lived like castles.