Lake Monroe Cottage

This project was a testament to our amazing clients, Springpoint Architects, and the collective vision of our craftsmen, with its arching vaulted steel framed workshop, the cottage with its hand seamed metal roofs, the custom Brown County sandstone fireplaces, and the western red cedar screen porch.

The steel I-beam framed workshop housed a hardware room, garden center, machine shop, as well as a lumber storage cellar equipped with state of the art radiant floor heat embedded in the monolithic concrete slab. The entire framing structure was sheathed in structurally insulated panels which are cut on a CNC machine to predetermined specifications creating a highly insulated, energy-efficient, and airtight envelope. The interior of the shop was skinned in rough sawn poplar, locally sourced, and corrugated metal to seamlessly tie in the industrial and rustic setting. 

The cottage was designed to meld outdoor entertaining while continuing to express the relationship between the raw and the refined. The hand bent standing seam metal roof flawlessly flashed around a protruding chimney made from local Brown County sandstone. The interior was framed around exposed steel I-beams carving through the sloped ceiling and lined with rift sawn white oak looking out through a wall of windows filling the front face of this home. 

The clients provided reclaimed barn pine boards that our local furniture maker Kirby Melick crafted into beautiful custom kitchen cabinets. Rift sawn white oak flooring continued through the kitchen, great room, and bedroom. Our carpenters built a beautiful red cedar screen porch outfitted with a custom-built sliding cedar barn door. Beyond the screen, the porch is a massive wrap-around deck made of composite decking and stainless cable, with a handrail made of Ipe, a rainforest hardwood.