This traditional vacation house on Maine’s Sebago Lake was designed for relaxing
Raymond Neck on Maine’s Sebago Lake is a 5-mile-long wooded peninsula that is home to large waterside seasonal houses as well as traditional youth summer camps such as Wohelo and Wawenock, both of which have been around for more than 100 years.
Raymond Neck on Maine’s Sebago Lake is a 5-mile-long wooded peninsula that is home to large waterside seasonal houses as well as traditional youth summer camps such as Wohelo and Wawenock, both of which have been around for more than 100 years. One of the newest “camps” on the neck is a 4,000-square-foot contemporary glass and cedar house that takes the form of a pair of buildings connected by covered porches and unified by green standing-seam metal roofing.
Architect Jeremiah Eck of Eck | MacNeely Architects in Boston designed the expansive waterfront retreat for a couple and their three young children whose year-round home is in a Boston suburb. His clients came to Maine looking for oceanfront property, but after a family vacation in a cabin on a lake, they fell in love with the relaxed summer life of freshwater canoeing, kayaking, fishing, swimming, and just generally taking it easy.
“We wanted our kids to be able to beat on this place and be comfortable,” says the husband, an investment broker. “And we have two crazy dogs. The space is awesome and perfect for what we do — grill, hang out, play games.”
The couple commissioned Eck to design “a modern farmhouse.” What he created was more than that — a vacation house inspired by the New England tradition of connected buildings and covered porches, but with casual and functional elegance.
“Siting is the most important thing of all,” says the architect, the author of House in the Landscape: Siting Your Home Naturally (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010). He set the house back from the tree-lined lakeshore, facing gorgeous sunsets across a cove littered with islands. “This site has nice subtle topography, — good sun, breezes, good views, and a really nice entry road so you discover the site as you arrive,” says Eck.
On the approach, the view is straight through the house to the lake as a procession of spaces leads into and out of the building. The primary living spaces are in an open-concept glass box while sleeping quarters are in an adjacent wing.
“The living space became a kind of pavilion with a number of options, — the glass box, the screened porch, the exposed deck, the section of deck covered by the trellised roof,” says Eck. “So there are four or five ways to enjoy the environment. It’s not just inside and outside, but a series of zones.”
The architecture defers to the outdoors, engaging the environment with ample windows whose jambs echo the verticals of the trees. The indoor/outdoor line is further blurred by a pass-through window between the kitchen and the covered porch. In fact, it was a similar window Eck designed into a cottage on Block Island in Rhode Island (“Point of Views,” Design New England, July/August 2013) that the couple say sold them on the architect.
The kitchen features a stove with a zinc hood as well as a large zinc and walnut island that would be the envy of most restaurants.
“Zinc is an interesting material I had never worked with before on the inside of a house,” says Andy Seymour, project manager for Wright-Ryan Construction of Portland, Maine. “It’s like copper. It has a living finish, it patinas, changes colors, and because it’s not sealed, it shows fingerprints and drink rings. It’s has an organic feel. It will age gracefully with the house.”
The living room area has floor-to-ceiling granite Rumford fireplace capable of heating the entire first floor. The high, open interior is made possible by a custom truss system of slender steel rods that eliminates the need for heavy timber posts and beams.
Much of the family’s summer life is lived on the screened porch and on the generous ipe deck whose trellised edge roof gives a handcrafted look to an otherwise high-style house.
The bedroom wing features laundry room, playroom, three bedrooms, and two bathrooms on the ground floor and a balconied master bedroom suite with studio office above. A natural palette of stone, wood, and neutral colors is used throughout, giving the house a restful, airy feel. Triple-glazed windows insulate and supply ample sunlight.
“You can be inside when it’s 32 degrees and windy or 90 degrees,” says the husband, “but it’s so tight, you can’t feel the elements.”
Traditional Maine lake cottages tend to be dark, draughty lodges as closed and intimate as the northern landscape, but Eck’s take on the genre is fashionable yet functional, a series of thoughtful spaces that spill down toward the water. The entire complex, serene and still, is anchored to the site by low granite walls and stairs.
“This is our first full summer at the lake,” the wife tells a visitor one lazy afternoon last August as her children play on the screened porch watched over by their grandmother and a pair of protective Dobermans. “One day I saw the three kids sitting on the stone wall munching peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and just gazing out over the lake. I took a snapshot and sent it to Jeremiah with a note that said, ‘This is just what I wanted. You got it.’”
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