FREE FLOW. Kelly Konoske notes that most homeowners have jumped onto the open-concept “bandwagon” because it helps a home live larger. In addition, more light is shared between the spaces, and families and guests can interact, even while doing other activities (ultimately, it’s more conducive to entertaining, which is important in a vacation house). “Furniture and architecture are both essential to distinguishing the areas, as you can see here,” she says.
PHOTOGRAPHED BY BETH SINGER
|ABOVE| THE GREAT OUTDOORS. The exterior of the home boasts authentic cottage details such as cedar shake shingles, large porches, abundant windows, Tuscan columns and an upper trellis. The stone is a river rock that’s also found on the great room fireplace and on the floors (in a smaller scale) of one of the guest bathrooms, making both the interior and exterior of the cottage coalesce beautifully with the landscape.
There’s nothing like a summer away from the busy pace of 21st -century life—and there’s no place quite like Menonaqua, a historical association, to experience it.
This was the happy realization made by a New York couple as they hit “pause” and vacationed at Menonaqua, in Harbor Springs, Michigan. There, they spent time enjoying the protected dunes that stretch along Little Traverse Bay on Lake Michigan and the picturesque, untouched tranquility that’s hard to find in our ever-modernizing world.
Wanting to preserve and pass on that summery sense of serenity, they envisioned a place for their family to gather for generations to come. They knew Menonaqua was the place to build a vacation cottage for just that purpose.
The couple enlisted Jill Nuding, head of construction at Cottage Company of Harbor Springs, and Kelly Konoske, president of Cottage Company Interiors, to create their waterfront “pocket of peace.”