Welcome to the Clubhouse

How one firm turned a boxy, cramped 100-year-old house into a gentleman's lake retreat.

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A BIT MAD MEN AND A BIT ROARING ’20S.

That’s the direction that Tanner Sammons got for his repeat client’s white-shingled 1920s home, situated among Ohio’s Portage Lakes. When the homeowner, “a single, older gentleman,” retired, he decided to make the two-bedroom retreat his primary residence and brought Sammons on to redecorate. “I said, ‘This project is far greater than sofas and pillows,’” the designer remembers, citing countless red flags that a renovation was in order: tiny rooms that didn’t flow, low-hung ceilings, unusually small doorways, and crumbly faux stucco walls.