ALL PHOTOS BY CHERYL FOSDICK
Katherine Merrill wanted a home with a small footprint and a lakeview, so the house itself becomes a bridge (top) with multiple layers, walls of windows (facing page) and a bridgeway access from living room to a sun porch (bottom).
When Katherine Merrill decided to build a home on the shore of Lake Superior, she already knew exactly where.
After all, years ago she’d purchased a 12-acre Wisconsin site, and it had long welcomed her family for camping trips and getaways. “I always had a dream to build a home there. I had this wonderful land, and it seemed ridiculous not to use it for a home.”
With her love established for the remote retreat, she wanted an efficient, elegant and environmentally friendly house that also would be a comfortable respite from her busy life as a Twin Cities attorney. She wanted it to embrace the landscape without overwhelming it.
She found the right ally in Cheryl Fosdick of CF Design, with offices in Duluth and Bayfield, Wisconsin.
“I wanted someone who worked in the area and researched websites,” Katherine says. “I liked what I saw of her work. So I called Cheryl up, and we hit it off. We had numerous discussions about what I wanted, and she listened.”
“Well-designed custom homes are an investment in one’s convictions and beliefs regarding good living, healthy environment, and sense of place,” Cheryl says.
Cheryl’s willingness to work with the space at hand proved invaluable on this land with its challenge of how to preserve wetlands and only a handful of buildable elevations. The answer became a multilevel house with a minimal foundation.
“I love the project’s integration in its landscape,” Cheryl says. “It’s very design depends upon the character of the land and working within the delicate condition created by human history on the land.”
The result is a cozy home with a small footprint, numerous levels and a dramatic, open feel capitalizing on the shoreline, woods and wetlands.
One pillar of the home has a garage on the lower level topped with an elevated living room and a dramatic two-sided slate fireplace. From there, one can take a walkway to a separate 260-square-foot building topped with a screen porch and sheltering a sauna and woodshed beneath.
In another direction from the living room, one steps down to traverse a glassed-in walkway over a wetland. The passage serves as a dining area leading into the open kitchen.
Farther on and another three steps down, the home’s second pillar holds a guest room and bathroom then drops a final step into a very private master bedroom suite.
All this in only 1,732 square feet of house.
“I only had a few requirements going into this,” Katherine says. “One was that the house had to be small. Another was there needed to be space for a couple pieces of furniture that are important to me.”
Katherine’s grandfather’s table in the walkway/dining room.
One piece, an 8-foot-long table with benches, belonged to Katherine’s grandfather. The 100-year-old table was a fixture at his cabin on the Wisconsin River. “He built that cabin in the 1920s as his retreat. I have wonderful memories of that cabin and sitting at that table, and I wanted to add to those wonderful memories here.” The table anchors the walkway/dining space.
The second piece is her mother’s loom, gifted to her mother from her grandparents. It sits by the dormer window of the living room overlooking the drive and woods.
Katherine, who loves to cook, wanted a modern, functional kitchen that didn’t sacrifice any views. Cheryl designed the centerpiece: a waterfall counter of Zodiaq quartz that complements the white oak veneer cabinets.
“Because of all the windows in the house, there are no overhead cabinets,” Katherine points out. “All the storage is underneath counters, and it all works. I’m very happy with it.”
Cheryl suggested the house’s light interior colors to recall the property’s former birch forest, cleared for farming long ago.
One of the home’s many showpieces is the dramatic see-through fireplace, sheathed in gray slate, that harkens to Lake Superior’s granite cliffs and keeps the space open, Katherine says. “Once it was done, we decided it didn’t need a mantle. It’s perfect just as it is.”
Katherine also requested Cheryl make the outside as important as the inside of the home. Walls of windows incorporate the outdoors into almost every foot of the interior, while 730 square feet of decking, accessible from the entry, kitchen or bedroom, creates outdoor “rooms.” The deck morphs into a zig-zag boardwalk from the home across wetlands to the Lake.
For translating ideas into reality, the designer and home owner both praised Dana Noteboom and Leo Ketchum of Lake Effect Builders in Washburn. “Everyone on their crew was great,” Katherine says. “They were a fun, professional group to work with and always responsive.”
Ultimately, Cheryl believes this home tells a story. “I love the change in elevation within the building, the rising to the trees and a narrow, darkened descent into forest floor vegetation to sleep and to bathe. … It is storytelling, and that, to me, is the highest aim or meaning for any place one calls home. Especially a home for the person who Katherine is – a curious, environmentally mindful, adventurous, engaged, observant and independent woman.”
Her dream home completed, Katherine intends to enjoy every moment there bicycling, kayaking, canoeing and cross-country skiing. “I really look forward to being there. It’s so incredibly peaceful.”
Claire Duquette, who lives in Washburn, understands falling for the Wisconsin shore.