Upgraded & Upcycled

An entrepreneurial couple blends a vacation lodge with everyday living.

Overlooking sweeping lake cove views, these entrepreneurial homeowners have achieved a balance of clean lines, history, and the great outdoors.

Their country home was completed in December 2018, the fruit of 25 years as business owners of an agency. The family moved in over Christmas, which couldn’t be more appropriate for the lodge-like home.

After two decades of living in a self-described small and sunlight-deprived house, the homeowners felt windows with as many viewpoints as possible were mandatory. The homeowners made it easy for their contractor, Shannon Block Construction, by choosing a home lot flanked by forests and long views of a nearby lake.

The outdoorsy family’s lifestyle had as much to do with choosing their dream home’s location as the scenery. Whether it’s hunting, fishing, or simply going on a stroll with their dogs, the family relishes their surroundings. One of the homeowners has been an avid arrowhead hunter since she was a little girl, and her expansive collection is proudly displayed in the living space.

Shannon Block & Tina Davis — Builder, Shannon Block, and interior designer, Tina Davis, sit atop a custom coffee table handcrafted by Shannon to house remnants of arrow heads & collected stones unworthy of display boxes but still perfect for showcasing the homeowners’ rustic style.

The collaboration between Shannon, owner of Shannon Block Construction; Tina Davis, interior designer; and the homeowners instantly clicked. They quickly found that they shared a similar taste and a rustic vision for the house.

“When people first come in, they say it looks like a Bass Pro Lodge. He broadened my horizon to see that we could do this,” says one homeowner of Shannon.

Benefits of Elbow Grease

Shannon notes that while there are conventional aspects of the house, there are also more personalized features, such as the careful curation of the wood used throughout the space. The home is full of history, and many of the antiques throughout are family heirlooms. Some of the wooden beams, hinges, tracks, and pulleys seen in entertaining spaces come from a homeowner’s father’s 150-year-old barn.

Tina Davis was brought on board to contribute to the design of the home. Tina has more than 20 years of design experience in building and remodeling residential and commercial projects. In all her projects, Tina creates spaces that are a direct reflection of the customer’s tastes and cater to the uniqueness to her clients.

The homeowners had been collecting eclectic pieces for their dream home for years, and that assortment fueled Tina’s designs. For example, Tina was given a pile of hand-polished pebbles to work with, which would later end up adorning the shower walls in the master bathroom.

“Every time we questioned a design choice we always went back to the family’s history to make a decision that would still make sense in the overall design,” says Tina.

As a third-generation carpenter, Shannon, too, often creates custom projects for his clients. As he investigates and deconstructs out-of-commission structures, he looks for architectural details, such as old hardware, with the intention to repurpose it. He finds many of his wooden gold mines, like sturdy white oak, through friends.

“It’s the same thing they make whiskey barrels out of,” says Shannon. “They use it for whiskey barrels because when they pour the liquid into the barrel, the pores constrict and don’t allow water to go through. If you pour liquid into other oaks, it’ll soak into the wood and eventually rot it.”

Afterwards, the wood is hauled to a storage facility to be power washed and treated for rot, insecticides, and mildew. The whole process takes a force of manpower due to the sheer weight of the timber.

“It’s not like putting a couple two-by-fours together,” says Shannon. “You’re dealing with timbers that weigh 800 pounds a piece, and you’re trying to negotiate them 10 to 20 feet up into the air.”

In the end, all of their hard work paid off. While the project was no doubt a labor of love, the resulting space was truly the dream home that the homeowners had been visualizing for 25 years. The family values the attention to detail.

“The beams are like looking into a fire,” says one homeowner. “You’re mesmerized by the flames. The beams do the same thing because I’m looking at all the axe marks.”

The homeowners say the kitchen is the most creative room. The light fixture, one of Shannon’s creations, also used wood sourced from the homeowner’s father’s barn.

Still, the homeowners’ favorite kitchen feature is the pantry door, which helped direct the overall design of the kitchen. This door has a historic past; It came from a homeowner’s father, who use it in his barn. Further, his homestead was located on the Boone Bill trail.

Now, the homeowners are making their own history.

Builder, Shannon Block, and interior designer, Tina Davis, sit atop a custom coffee table handcrafted by Shannon to house remnants of arrow heads & collected stones unworthy of display boxes but still perfect for showcasing the homeowners’ rustic style.