A vintage cottage in Northern Michigan finds love in a modern age.
This article first appeared in Traverse Northern Michigan. Find this story and more when you explore our magazine library. Want Traverse delivered to your door or inbox monthly? View our print subscription and digital subscription options.
Rick Turchetti has fond memories of spending time on sprawling, sparkling Crystal Lake as a child. When he and his wife, Kathy, began searching for a cottage Up North, he naturally gravitated to the Crystal Lake area. One July day in 2014, a listing popped up on his phone for a home on Platte Lake. “To be honest, I didn’t even know this lake existed because there’s a hill between Crystal Lake and Platte,” he says. He was intrigued—by both the 3.3-mile-long lake and the photos of the cottage on the listing. While it was clear the cottage had drawbacks (it wasn’t winterized and there were holding tanks), Rick was impressed by its extensive original woodwork.
As luck would have it, he and Kathy, who live in Grand Rapids, were visiting friends in the area, so they decided to pop by that day. From the get-go, the cottage hardly looked promising. A mouse skittered across the floor as they entered, and once inside the tightly shuttered interior, Kathy spied another dead mouse on the fireplace mantel. “It was just stinky, dirty and claustrophobic,” she says.
Photo by Angela DeWitt
Nevertheless, Rick found the woodwork was even more stunning than the photo had shown. The walls, ceilings and rafters were clad with clear (meaning completely free of knots) Douglas fir that was as smooth and unscathed as it had been when the cottage was built in 1927. Enamored as he was, Rick was pretty sure his wife would hate it. But Kathy has her own eye for vintage finds, one that began focusing through the dim light on original wicker furniture, Art Deco lamps and sconces, a cupboard full of Depression glass—all in time-capsule condition.
Indeed, it was as if the Ohio banker who built the cottage a century ago had simply locked the door behind him on his last visit. In reality, however, the cottage, which stayed in the same family all those decades, had been used for at least several weeks a summer. But almost unbelievably, none of those descendants had ever changed anything, right down to allowing the small maple trees on the lakeside to grow into monstrous specimens that, by the time the Turchettis toured the home, completely blocked the lake view—although the cottage is set just steps from the water.
Photo by Angela DeWitt
Photo by Angela DeWitt
Photo by Angela DeWitt
The couple knew they had found a diamond in the rough and bought the cottage turnkey. And then began two years of clearing stuffed closets, opening boxes and cleaning, sorting and curating the seemingly endless array of contents. Gross stuff (and there was plenty) was tossed into a dumpster. The Douglas fir woodwork paneling was scrubbed with Murphy’s Oil Soap until it gleamed, as was the original one-inch-wide tongue-and-groove maple flooring. The windows—all original glass—were polished until they shone. The Depression glass got a bath, too, before it was put back into its original cupboard. The couple culled the mountains of old tools in the garage and walk-up attic, then carted away what they couldn’t use. The wicker was cleaned up and kept, the Art Deco lighting re-wired and re-hung, and the fireplace and chimney refurbished.
Photo by Angela DeWitt
Along the way, the couple un-earthed surprises both small and, well, huge. Among them, two Limbert (the once-upon-a-time competitor to Stickley) chairs, fishing gear dating to the 1930s, and antique toys including a rare wind-up car sporting passengers Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd—tin versions of Edgar Bergen’s famous puppet pair. Exciting, but nothing matched the thrill of finding antique Navajo rugs on the floors, stacked in boxes and one still rolled in its original wrapping bearing its very vintage price tag of $380. The rugs were recently appraised for around $60,000.
The Turchettis more than appreciated the historical value of their new cottage. The problem: How could they winterize it and bring the electrical and HVAC up to modern standards without totally gutting it?
Photo by Angela DeWitt
After some head scratching and consulting with contractor David Kwekel of BDD Construction, Rick, an engineer, came up with the ingenious idea of framing it out and insulating from the outside and then covering it with an exact replica of the original exterior. Not only did this solution allow them to save all of the cottage’s interior woodwork, but this also meant the original windows and casements could remain intact. The new casement windows were simply installed over the old ones—the old ones still open in, while the new overlays open out.
Now finished, the home blends perfectly with the neighboring cottages, which date from the same era. It isn’t hard to imagine that old Ohio banker pulling up for a visit. Rick would offer him a cigar and then they’d get into all that vintage fishing equipment and probably some bourbon (Kathy would serve it in the Depression glass, of course) and who knows in what century they’d all end up.
Photo by Angela DeWitt
Photo by Angela DeWitt
Photo by Angela DeWitt