The summer after Arlene and Chuck Semel moved into a city apartment from the northern suburbs, it hit her: ”This is not good. I spent the summer walking in the parks, enjoying the city,” Arlene, an interior designer, says, ”but it seemed very strange to not have a beautiful outdoor place that was mine.”
The following year the Semels rented a house in the area around New Buffalo, Mich. Arlene schlepped all sorts of stuff from the city to the country ”to make it look good.” Her husband then decided he`d better buy a house in the area so he wouldn`t have to take it all back. ”We had looked at a number of musty old cottages that looked like they were going to fall apart,” Arlene says. ”By fluke, we came upon this house, which had been built on spec. We loved the location. It`s on a dead-end street. There are virtually no windows to the front, but everything in the back faces out to the woods, a sand dune and the remains of a very old orchard. What really sold us was the screened-in porch.”
From the exterior, there was not much to distinguish the house architecturally. It was constructed of rough-hewn pine that had weathered to a pleasant gray. ”It resembled a series of Monopoly houses kind of put together in pods,” Semel says. ”The last pod was a carport that looked terrible. We closed it off.”
Inside, they revamped the bathroom, which she says had a very odd assortment of fussy floral tile and a diagonal tub. She stuck with white and installed a double shower stall.
”We replaced a variety of peculiar light fixtures of bronze and crystal and changed what was a very small fireplace, much too small for the scale of the room, and built a new one with a ceramic-tile hearth.”
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The staircase, built on stilts, was enclosed, netting additional storage. ”We keep the TV inside on a cart,” she says, ”and roll it out where we want it.”
The whole house is about 1,600 square feet. ”I`ve come to learn a lot about living in small spaces,” Arlene says. ”In truth, the only space that anyone really cares about is what`s publicly occupied. Everybody hangs out in the living room. It doesn`t matter that the bedrooms are tiny (two upstairs, one on the first level). Mostly, we`re only here for a couple of days. It`s not claustrophobic. For a weekend house, it`s perfect.
”I love the fact that it was going to be a summer house but turned out to be year-round. Chuck and I lead very busy daily lives. The ride to the house is just right. We relax, come down from the week. When we get there, we feel transported.”