WE LOVE IT HERE, YOU WILL TOO
Welcome to our home on Seneca Lake
OUR STORY
We bought this lakehouse 6 years ago from the family who initially built the house. The house has been our labor of love since then and we have renovated all 3 bathrooms and refinished every wall and floor. The deck and dock are new, as is all of the landscaping (driveways, terracing, fire pit and “meditation garden”).
MEET RICH & CATHERINE
We both grew up on the water - Rich fishes, hunts and boats, and Catherine rows. We gather our friends and family here every summer and have hiked many of the local parks and visited the best of the wineries. While Rich is usually found adding or fixing something, Catherine is typically floating off the end of the dock with a glass of wine. We both work in healthcare and have 3 kids.
Catherine & Rich
Lakehouse Owners
THE RENOVATIONS
We closed on the house in November 2015. It was built in the early ’80s and had been left essentially untouched and owned by a single family since it was built. We stumbled upon our ugly duckling on our first trip to look at lake houses and grew to love it after our fair share of head scratching and Catherine’s robust imagination.
Every inch of the house was vintage ’80s – from the formica walls to the imitation wood paneling. Check out the chevron print imitation wood paneling in the master bedroom!! Our first move was to remodel the basement bathroom and tear out the dropped ceiling. That’s when we stumbled on the hand hewn solid joists and got our first peak of the ‘subfloor’ on the upper floors.
We quickly began ripping out the wall-to-wall carpet and realized that they had used beautiful hard pine for the subfloors. In what can only be described as a stroke of mad inspiration we decided to pull up all of the carpet and plywood, recess all of the flooring nails (pics of that adventure) and sand and refinish the subfloors. While the floor are a little noisy they are a thing of beauty!!
Our next big project was outside. One of the reasons we loved our spot was the privacy – with 270 feet of frontage it always feels like we are in our own little world even when the lake gets busy. But 270 feet of rocks and bleached mulch was a bit much. We hired a brilliant Landscape Architect, Mary Scipioni of Pebble-stream, who mapped out a plan for the entire site.
That first year we expanded the patio, added the fire pit and terraced the north lot providing both privacy and some color. We have enjoyed filling the yard with our eclectic taste in art including Humpty Dumpty by a local artist Robert Seaman. We expect the fire pit will become a favorite of our guests the way it has been for us. It’s rare that a night passes without our chairs gathered out front. More recently we started on the south side – adding the fountain to help create a bit of an oasis. In the coming years, we have high hopes for the beach and shed. Definitely more to come.
This past year, we gutted the main floor and top floor baths – putting some extra effort into creating a true master suite.
The house is a little quirky and immensely personal. We have enjoyed it as a place to gather our families, entertain our friends and escape from the chaos of life.