Spot 73 – Boyne City, MI
Spot 73: an early 19th century home reimagined as a short term rental property, sitting on Lot 73, in the popular vacation city of Boyne, Michigan.
An immersive and joyous experience for up to 9 guests was created. The home was inundated with color, gathering areas were maximized, and bedrooms were made both cozy and unique. The bedrooms, each with their own color, are in a constant competition, with each guest voting on their favorite. Where would your vote land, are you Team Coral, Team Blue or Team Green?
Tour the Project
NEVER GROW OLD
Tessa: It’s impossible to feel old at Spot 73! The colors are vibrant, the patterns are energetic, the artwork is vivid, and the spaces are immersive and interactive. Designed as a short-term rental experience, after staying at Spot 73, you will take colorful memories with you. Simply experiencing the space has the power to change how you feel about the environment you live in once you leave – it’s sugar and spice and everything nice!
HIDDEN TREASURE
Zeb: When we got our hands on the house it was a three bedroom. One of the rooms was massive, with the door opening onto the upstairs landing, directly at the top step. We decided to split the massive room into two, add a short hallway, and reconfigure door locations so that the two bedroom doors were set back a little bit from the top of the stairs, providing more privacy. When we ripped out the flooring, we found evidence beneath, that the way the house was originally constructed was within inches from what we had planned to do! This discovery confirmed our plan and went to show that good design decisions are truly timeless.
WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS
Tessa: Although this house is over 100 years old, it had endured a standard and depressingly baseline mid 80’s renovation. At first look, the house seemed to have been stripped of everything original. When demolition began, and carpeting was peeled back and subfloor removed, we found the original pine flooring was still hiding beneath. The planks were very thick and about 2” wide and briefly looked like they might be salvageable. The dream was short lived, they were warped and splintering, and had to go. Up to that point we hadn’t ever considered using pine in this house, but it then seemed appropriate to put back something original. We put a current spin on the pine by going with a much wider 9” plank and by adding a sealer with a white milky tint.
HEART THROB
Tessa: My favorite “move” is how we used one inexpensive material to create distinctive wall and ceiling applications in three of the bedrooms that accentuate the different ceiling conditions and varying angles. We applied 1×2” trim in unique ways and painted it all the same color as the walls and ceiling of each room. The trim in the coral room is applied in concentric arches mimicking the ceiling angles, starting at the headboard and fading out, and gives you the feeling of being pulled into bed. The blue room has trim pieces that fly up and over the bed, bending at each ceiling angle, each with rounded edges, you feel like you’ve slipped into a time warp. The green room, the only room with all right angles, has trim applied in an oversized grid, the grid clads an entire wall and wraps onto the ceiling and adjoining walls to feel like an oversized headboard. It was fun to see how the different applications created a special personality for each room.
TEAMWORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK
Zeb: Tessa got her hands on two very old church pews from a client of ours who owns a long shuttered (and very cool) Tabernacle. These things had fallen from grace, been exposed to water and were less than sturdy. I vocally wanted nothing to do with them! Tessa decided that I would turn them into an L-shaped banquette, which involved miter cuts and a full structural rework, new legs, sanding and filling the gaps and splits. This house has a relatively small dining room and we had been struggling to find a solution to accommodate all 9 of the people that it can sleep. Admittedly, being able to customize the pews is what allowed us to maximize the space enough to seat 9.