Midwestern Reunion

A Houston-based shop owner returns to her small-town roots in rural Ohio. This time she's got her family of five in tow, as they pack friends and extended family into their renovated ranch house brimming with cottage coziness.

- KELLY RYAN KEGANS

It would be the first in or around the tiny town. But Lyndsey Zorich would just as well have things stay the way they are, thank you very much. For her, the town where she grew up is a time capsule of childhood memories, a place where she's been on a first-name basis with the locals for as long as she can remember.

When Lyndsey turned 40 a few years ago, the Buckeye State tugged at her heartstrings. Having moved after college to Texas, where she had launched her design shop (@shoptheavenue) and started a family, the Houston tastemaker could no longer shake the desire to share a slice of slower-paced small-town living with her husband, Bret, and their three children. "There's something about a milestone birthday that makes you start to think about what you want to be doing and where you want to spend your time," Lyndsey says.

After scouring listings and land auctions with her father, Dave Johnson, who still lives in Chandlersville, Lyndsey landed on a 1971 midcentury-style ranch house nestled next to Salt Creek, the stream that runs through the area.

Coincidentally the house had belonged to the parents of one of her childhood friends, so she couldn't bear the thought of tearing it down. Instead, she and her father, a mason, renovated the house by opening up the floor plan in the main living areas, cladding the walls with white-painted shiplap, and adding a screened porch that overlooks the backyard and the historic creek beyond.