Lake Michigan spreading its azure hues across the horizon is a fitting backdrop for this perfectly executed villa near Traverse City.
This Up North home is a part of the 2024 Northern Home & Cottage virtual home tour, which features immersive video tours of nine incredible homes and interviews with local contractors and builders. Take a sneak peek inside, then get your event tickets.
Photo by Jacqueline Southby
Contractor: Mapleridge Construction
Location: Old Mission Peninsula
This stunner of a home on Old Mission Peninsula is a joint effort between homeowner/designer Liz Ascione, architect Doug Leahy of Geta Design and the talented crew at Mapleridge Construction. The collaboration has its genesis a number of years back when Ascione, who has made a second career of flipping and building homes, toured a house built by Mapleridge Construction on the Traverse City Parade of Homes. “I was just blown away at the quality of construction and detail in the home,” Ascione says.
Several years later, Ascione found a piece of property on an Old Mission Peninsula bluff above West Grand Traverse Bay and decided it was well suited to the modern Mediterranean design that she had been dreaming of building. It was during the Covid-19 pandemic and Mapleridge, like the rest of the building industry, was booked years out. Yet, when Ascione contacted them, co-owners Scott Naumes and Chris Miller told her they’d been saving a slot on their schedule for a project of hers ever since she’d gotten in touch with them after the Parade of Homes. With the contractors lined up, Ascione took her notebook full of designs to Leahy. “What he did with my concepts was just magic,” Ascione says.
Photo by Jacquline Southby
This home, with its airy, clean spaces and easy interplay between indoors and outdoors, exudes an elevated sense of the Mediterranean style that fits beautifully into Northern Michigan. Specific Mediterranean accents include a stucco-like exterior, grand limestone entrances, terraces and balustrades, high ceilings and Italian outdoor light fixtures. Interior Euro-Mediterranean touches include a bench seat and matching table designed by Ascione and built by a Portuguese furniture company. The great room is a standout, with a large custom built-in and backlit art display, a pyramid ceiling detailed with poplar shiplap and a two-sided Isokern fireplace that functions in both the great room and the outdoor patio space.
Perhaps nothing overshadows the primary closet. The closet has more than 56 feet of hanging rod space, backlit purse and shoe cubbies and beautifully lit quartzite countertops throughout.
If you love clean, luxurious design with a Mediterranean accent, don’t miss the Northern Home & Cottage Virtual Tour of this home.
Photo by Jacquline Southby