Photography by Michael Patch
Pinterest-perfect details inviting for family & friends
SML Charity Home Tour fans may have already visited Karen and Gary Cole’s home: It was one of eight lovely homes featured last October on the 2024 Smith Mountain Lake Charity Home Tour.
“In previous years, we really benefitted from the Home Tour, so we were eager to be part of it,” Gary said. “We went on the Tour in 2019 when we were anticipating building on a lot we had purchased back in 2015. At one of the houses, we met architect Eric Buck, who eventually designed our home.”
“Eric is the one who got our journey started. We really clicked with him,” Karen chimed in. “And he did a great job for us. Without the Home Tour, we would have been floundering around wondering who could help us. We also got several great ideas from homes on subsequent Home Tours.”
The back story
Both Karen and Gary graduated from Virginia Tech, but the couple was only vaguely aware of Smith Mountain Lake. Being water lovers, they were thinking “beach” for a getaway property. Then they visited family in upstate New York and began thinking, “Lake life is pretty appealing.” One visit to SML, and they were hooked.
“We wanted somewhere amazing that would later entice the kids to come home as often as possible,” Gary said. “Smith Mountain Lake is that kind of place.”
Construction of their home began in 2021 and continued for almost two years. Things were slowed somewhat by COVID-related supply chain and materials pricing issues. Builder Doug Bowman actually paused construction at one point when the price of plywood approached $90 a sheet. That delay was fortuitous: materials’ pricing fell back toward “normal” in the following months.
Design inspirations
The Cole home perfectly reflects the modern farmhouse style, from moldings to windows, doors to light fixtures. Karen admits to struggling with some of the decisions about flooring, cabinetry and exterior stone selection, so she sought counsel from Signature Interiors in Northern Virginia, where the couple used to live.
“In addition to the professional help, I pretty much lived on Pinterest during the run-up to the build,” Karen added, “where I stumbled onto a link to brick&batten. This company took the architect’s elevation drawings and brought them to life with ‘colorized’ renderings that suggested materials and other exterior design aspects. Suddenly, we knew exactly how we wanted the house to look.”
The home encompasses approximately 6,000 square feet of space on 2 ½ levels. The main level, floored in dark engineered hardwood, has an open great room that combines the living, dining and food preparation areas. A huge kitchen island, capped with white quartz in attractive contrast to black granite countertops, has clever under-counter cubbies — like the slots in old-time school desks — to tuck away laptops, books or other works in progress.
“That idea came from the Houzz website,” Karen was happy to confess. “It’s a clever way to avoid counter-top clutter.”
Another great idea: the beauty of the unique tile backsplashes is uninterrupted by light switches or electric outlets. Instead, they’re located out of sight, on the bottoms of upper cabinets — a nifty design touch that adds to the clean feel of the kitchen.
All of the lighting in the kitchen/dining/living area is controlled by several Lutron mini-panels. “This eliminated what would have been an unsightly stack of many traditional switches,” Gary noted, “and it also allows for programmed on/off times and remote control by phone app.”
A few steps away is a pantry-to-die-for — big enough to be a guest room! There are shelves, cabinets, a freezer, refrigerator, wine fridge and a sink.
Livable spaces
Living room furniture centers around a jazzy gas fireplace with wooden built-ins on both sides. Adjoining the living area is a screened porch with a fireplace. A porch door leads to a covered grilling deck with a sink built into the granite prep counter.
Outside the living room is a deck with furniture centered around a gas fire pit. The vertical cable deck railing allows for unobstructed lake views. A 20-foot ceiling over the main section adds to the feeling of spaciousness.
The main level also includes a huge primary suite complete with a lake view and an electric fireplace with a unique floor-to-ceiling surround made of wavy-looking dense foam that Karen discovered on Pinterest. The adjoining primary bath has heated floors, a free-standing tub and an unusually large shower with brick around the bottom third. A large walk-in closet is fitted with a California Closet arrangement of shelves, drawers, hanging areas and a center-island dresser.
Lake level
An elevator connects the main floor to the lake level, a nod to the couple’s parents who might have trouble with stairs in a few years. Downstairs, grayish, wood-looking Luxury Vinyl Tile covers the floors. There is a large family room with a fireplace, sitting area, large flatscreen TV, a pool table and a kitchenette. Wooden barn doors — just two of the nine found in the home — are used along a hallway to conceal storage areas.
There are three bedrooms on the lake level: one with an adjoining bath for guests; one for college sophomore son, Alex, and one for college senior, Emily, whose bathroom has a stunning mirror framed with rope. A Jack-and-Jill style shower room is located between their separate bathroom areas.
The closets here and in the rest of the home are all lit automatically when doors are opened — very convenient. Emily’s room is painted an icy blue, a change from the white, gray and black on walls, window trim, mullions and light fixtures throughout the rest of the house. Extensive dark brown hickory and oak custom cabinetry and wall panels, built by Rutrough Cabinets of Rocky Mount, Va., provide a richness to the color palette.
Clever additions
Up an extended flight (ceilings in the home are 11′ and more!) from the main level is what Karen calls the “book nook,’” a generous reading room with kitchenette. This space, discovered during the build, was just too appealing to be left as unfinished storage. When the guest list includes kids, they can chill out in a large upper-floor loft area that has four sleeping nooks, each with a barn door for privacy.
“The under-eve sleeping area was another idea we grabbed from a Home Tour visit,” Karen said.
The garage is massive, with unique doors set so far apart that more cars would fit in the spaces between the three that reside there. The doors themselves are unique, each featuring four frosted windows stacked to one side rather than stretching across the top. The garage floor sports an attractive epoxy finish. Indeed, if you were a car, this would be a superb place to hang out between road trips!
A winding decorative stone path leads from a fully-covered lower patio to a roomy dock where a jet boat, two Personal Watercrafts, paddle boards and other water toys await. Next to the dock is a natural sandy beach that is shaded by large, old trees — quite uncommon near a new house. All in all, an inviting place for waterfront fun! ✦