The Milwaukee Journal Home - September 9, 1990
	[project portfolio page for this design] Lakeside Bungalow A respectable city style finds a way to embrace the lake country By Nick Pabst Special to the Journal

Oconomowoc -- It used to be a house of many doors, a dark house with tiny rooms and oak paneling painted black, a house on a lake with no view of water. It was a Milwaukee-style bungalow that seemed to belong in a city instead of on the tree-lined shores of Lac La Belle, where it was built 80 years ago. But no more. Now it is a house that belongs on a lake. Its rooms have been opened to the light and the seasons and lake country living.

The house was built in 1910 to look like hundreds of others in Milwaukee. But in the past year and a half, it has undergone a major transformation. [The owners] moved out for six months, during which time they had walls torn down, got rid of doors and had black paint stripped off oak.

They substantially extended the entire lake side of the home and added a huge, curving red-brick terrace there as well as a partly underground three-car garage and new landscaping. On Sept. 29 the house will be part of the 1990 Tour of Homes sponsored by the Auxiliary of Memorial Hospital at Oconomowoc. Tickets cost $8 in advance and $10 on the day of the tour. They may be purchased at the hospital's gift store or Tobin Drugs in Oconomowoc. The tour hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The [owners] bought their Milwaukee-style bungalow 17 years ago when they moved here from Michigan with their three children. The house was sturdy, durable, and beautifully situated. It seemed no matter that it was a maze of small, dark rooms. Nor that there seemed to be heavy wooden doors everywhere and that none of the windows opened on to the lake. Eventually the children left to start their own lives. The rooms that had once provided privacy now created a sense of isolation. So it was time to decide whether to move or remodel. Money wasn't a problem. The children's college educations were paid for. Ten years earlier, [one of the owners] had bought the company he moved here to work for...and it was doing very well. For three years, the [owners] considered what to do. They talked to architects about remodeling. They talked to real estate agents about selling. They looked at houses. Finally, they realized that their house was the one for them. They hired architect Andrew Boer, of Andrew Boer Architects of Milwaukee, and decorator Cynthia Ethington, to do the work. She is with Pace Architects of Milwaukee. Four upstairs bedrooms now are three. The largest overlooks the water and ice of Lac La Belle. Part of what had been a son's bedroom has been lined with marble and brass and turned into a bathroom with a whirlpool and a stained glass window as part of the master suite. All of the original brass fixtures in the house were repaired by the Brass Light Gallery in Milwaukee. Downstairs, the [owners] opened up the half of the house nearest to the lake. The walls that once had set off a sun porch, kitchen, pantry, family room, study, and closets disappeared. Now such functional divisions are blurred. The new kitchen, and eating area and a sitting area around a fireplace, a bar -- all now share the same unbroken space. Guests at summer parties can roam freely through the entire downstairs of the house and out onto the terrace. The new garage, set under an end of the terrace, is reached through the remodelled basement. A dumbwaiter lifts groceries from the garage to the kitchen. And what had been a cistern just off one end of the basement will soon become a wine cellar. The house was built in 1910 by a retired Milwaukee business executive and his wife who were raising their granddaughter. They wanted to give her a chance to grow up away from the problems of the city. Later the house was bought by a Chicago family for a son who had been disabled in an accident and needed constant care. To tend the son, a couple with eight children moved into the house with him. From the street, the bungalow looks typically chunky, angular and enduring. The front entrance is reached by way of a brick-walled porch with concrete steps. Just inside the front door are the living room, dining room, and the stairs to the second floor. Dark, slightly pungent oak is everywhere -- the floor planks, wall panels, stairs, moldings. But straight ahead through the hallway, the house changes perceptibly. What woodwork there is here has been painted a soft peach color. Windows span the entire north wall. In this house, the visitor senses not so much two architectural personalities as two sides of the same personality. On the lake side of the house, the lines of the original bungalow are repeated in the new windows, doors, and modlings. Just beyond the windows, the new rectangular pillars on the terrace recall the pillars at the front of the house. Did the [owners] fear that they might lose the traditional feeling of a Milwaukee bungalow with so extensive a remodelling? Yes, [one] said. Each time a wall came down, she and her husband wondered whether they were doing the right thing, whether a house could be remade so completely and not end up with a split personality. Now they have their answer. The remodeling has turned out even better than they had hoped, they said.