Union Pier is a small coastal town on Lake Michigan. At just a short one-hour drive from Chicago, it’s a popular area for city dwellers to purchase vacation homes. Here, Devon Grace Interiors was tasked with designing a summer home for a young family with small children. The goal was to create a space that reflects a relaxed, earthy feel—remaining true to their client’s personality and aesthetic, while incorporating natural materials with organic textures and earthy tones throughout the home to achieve a more coastal, relaxed, and bohemian feel that aligns with the neighborhood.
The designers tell us more:
We’d love to know about your vision for this home.
We tailored our design to fit the family’s need for both an open-concept, communal space for time with family and dedicated zones for the kids to be kids and adults to entertain.
The client’s personal style was modern, but because it was their second home and a lake house, we intended to lean into a more coastal design. As a result, we would describe the style as modern and bohemian with organic, earthy touches that give the space a beachy feel.
What were some of the challenges you faced with the design?
This project was unique from the start because our clients purchased the home from its previous owners when it was just 50% of the way through the building process. When we were brought onto the project, the floor plan was established, walls were framed, flooring was installed, and the fireplace structure was located. The existing conditions of the home fell somewhere between a renovation and a new build, meaning we needed to tailor our usual process to meet the home (and our client’s) design needs. Besides these few existing architectural details in place, our team was given a blank slate to implement a really unique and customized design with millwork and furnishings.
The home has a gorgeous open concept plan, with a show-stopper kitchen. We’d love to know more about this space.
Beyond the entryway, the main floor features a completely open-concept kitchen, dining, and living room. We designed the kitchen with plain sawn white oak cabinetry that really celebrates the cathedral veining of the natural wood and gives the space an overall earthy feel. We carried the same white oak cabinetry into the dining room and living room, acting as a ribbon that ties all of the spaces together seamlessly. The cabinet doors throughout the kitchen feature plank paneling, and we opted to paint them white to balance out the wood tones. The kitchen design was all about incorporating depth through natural textures, seen in the wood cabinetry, plaster hood, and hand-made Moroccan zellige backsplash tile. Rather than carrying the cabinetry up to the 14-foot ceiling, we opted to create a unique, plant ledge to incorporate some pops of greenery that draws the eye up to celebrate the ceiling height.
For more details on the space, from floor plan to decor, check out the slideshow.