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For over three years, Kevin and Peggy Gaffney searched for properties right on the Portage Lakes. They’ve always been drawn to the lakes for boating and dining, and while they have lived nearby, they’ve never had a house at the water’s edge. Then they found the perfect 6,900-square-foot home on a 300-foot bend of Mud Lake and moved in during June 2018 with their goldendoodle, Finbar.
“Where it was and everything really drew us to it,” Kevin says. “I wanted someplace that had privacy and parking, which is hard to get on Portage Lakes.” With the three-bedroom, four-bathroom house being on a double cul-de-sac lot and having a three-car garage, there’s plenty of room for their big families with kids and friends to visit.
The house did, however, show that it was built in 1983 with oak everywhere, pink carpet and tile in the owner’s bedroom and bath, a frosted window with a duck scene in a loft and carpeting in the great and dining rooms. They enlisted Green-based Shultz Design & Construction to remodel the basement and owner’s bedroom and bath in 2019. In the bedroom, they redid the fireplace in a stacked stone for a natural lakeside feel and expanded the walk-in closets with custom his and hers racks. Flooded with light from two existing skylights, the airy bathroom got new blue Amish-made, quartz-topped cabinets with gold hardware for a touch of warmth and a new custom walk-in tile shower with a wave mosaic.
In the basement, a room with a broken-down hot tub got upgraded to a cigar lounge and wine room — an idea Peggy got from a North Canton Parade of Homes tour that suited the couple, as they are wine club members and Kevin enjoys stogies.
“We have our guys there to watch some football games, smoke a cigar,” Kevin says. The best part is they installed an Echols Heating & Air Conditioning ventilation system, so there’s zero smell or smoke leakage.
By February 2020, the Gaffneys had moved into a rental so Shultz’s team could return for an overhaul of the main floor and upstairs. But construction revealed major hazards.
“We found a significant dip in the floor and some undersized framing,” says Darren Shultz, vice president of construction for Shultz. “It never had the proper support under it.”
To remedy it, they cut into the new cigar lounge and the home’s slab foundation and added new footing with steel columns to jack up and support the structure. They then resealed the lounge.
Another hurdle came after a stormy night when the team noticed water leaking from the great room windows and soaking the carpet. “We started taking off siding and … finding massive rot all over the outside of the house,” Shultz says.
The Gaffneys agreed to have nearly all of the windows and doors replaced and the siding redone in a slightly darker James Hardie fiber cement siding. Installing larger floor-to-ceiling windows with darker exterior frames woke up the previously dim great room. They replaced nearly all the first-floor flooring with white oak for a light, cohesive look.
The previously heavy oak three-story foyer staircase got thinned out as a staircase with custom-fabricated, powder-coated iron-steel railings topped with oak by Finelli Architectural Iron & Stairs in Solon.
“The outside of the home is the modern aesthetic.We wanted to try to bring some of that inside,” Shultz says. Up the stairs leads to a catwalk connected to the loft, where a wall got knocked down to turn it into an open, brighter area. Down the stairs leads to the basement, with the cigar lounge, a koi pond and bridge, a conversation pit and a sunken bar.
Designers kept that modern look in mind when reworking the black-and-gold hearth fireplace in the great room. With the fireplace stretching two stories, it needed to be subtle. The answer was hard coat stucco with a linear gas fireplace accented by an elegant gold chandelier and pairings of burnt orange and royal blue statement chairs.
The step-up dining room got a face-lift with a stunning live-edge marble Arhaus table and an Amish-made wet bar, topped with live-edge Cambria quartz, to match. But the view from the larger windows outshines all the finery.
“We see the sunrise. And the sunset is unbelievable,” Kevin says. “All the reflections coming from behind us on the house across the lake is so cool.”
The breakfast nook is equally as impressive with a live-edge marble circular table — surrounded by three floor-to-ceiling windows and two overhead Velux skylights replacing an old leaking one.
The previously all-oak kitchen was small for the large house, so relocating a pantry and coat closet opened up space for new side-by-side stainless-steel Thermador ovens, a hidden walk-in pantry behind a sliding barn door and new Amish-made, quartz-topped white cabinets. There’s a waterfront look with a four-seater light blue island and a wave tile design in the backsplash over the ovens.
The surprises turned the project into a comprehensive remodel, so the couple didn’t move back into their dream lake house until last October.
The pair are looking forward to their first summer living right on the water and enjoying resort-worthy outdoor amenities: a large pool, a life-size chessboard, a sandy Tiki bar, a practice green, a kitchen and a dock for their red pontoon boat that they take to nearby restaurants.
“It feels great,” Kevin says. “We see the lake. It’s so open now. This is really lake living.”
CLOSER LOOK
