Thursday, February 13, 2025

Where We Live: A cozy castle

Driving to this home could end in disaster.

Owners Steve and Dee Bost said about half of GPSes get it wrong, taking a visitor down a long, gravel road about 15 minutes out of the way and ending at one of the neighborhood’s dams. But ignore the GPS, if need be, and follow the Bost family’s directions, because once this home is in view, it can’t be missed.

This 9,000-square-foot home has too much to offer to list herebay windows filling the primary living room up to its cathedral ceilings, an in-home sauna, a 2,700-square-foot deck running the length of the home to a gazebo and breathtaking waterfront overlookbut when the Bosts bought the property in 2015, maintenance had fallen to the wayside and it needed a sincere pick-me-up.

“People were just afraid of it, so for me, I looked at it as a heck of an opportunity,” Bost said.

So the couple got right to work.

Living mostly cooped up in the master suite, and rationing chores to their vibrant, yellow laundry room, the couple spent a year and a half renovating. After new paint, 164 LED bulbs, not an inconsiderable amount of sweat, and many months of important decisions made with the contractors, the Bosts finally took a breath in their finished dream home, one they call “the best of both worlds,” meaning it gives them the luxury of a large space without feeling cold.

But they weren’t afraid to leave intact some of the more interesting pieces left by the original owners, such as a gaudy, hand painted, gold inlaid toilet. That’s right. A $10,000 toilet.

“Okay, wait a minute,” Bost said he was thinking after Dee had done some research. “Why am I going to take that up? It’s too much of a conversation piece.”

Delighted, Bost tells a story of one contractor turning up at their front door some time after working with them, holding a camera and asking: “can I take a photo of your toilet?”

“How many time are you going to hear that?” Bost said.

The contractor’s wife had apparently not believed he had used a $10,000 toilet, and Bost said he was happy to let him gather evidence.

There are other amenities to stop visitors in their tracks, some original from when the home was built in 1984, and others picked up by Steve and Dee over the past few years.

The grand foyer is home to two giant, hand-painted murals. One guest bedroom houses a sleek, 20th century clawfoot bathtub. The kitchen is stocked wall-to-wall with professional tools, including an exhaust hood over the oven. And the driveway circles around an antique, locally purchased, brass fountain, lit brilliantly in the evenings for Christmas, of course.

Although he’s visibly excited about every room of the home, reiterating over and over how lucky he and his wife are, Bost said he might be most excited about the trees.

Sitting in the center of two lots and clocking in at 1.44 acres, the property surrounding the home is topographically “stunning” as Bost often called it. The landscape is dotted with cedars, tulip poplars, Asian pears and a weeping willow.

“I sound like a tree hugger, I’m really not, but I just dig trees,” Bost said.

Bost said the home just needed a healthy serving of tender loving care by updating what was needed, and by leaving alone the elements that give the home its unique character.

In the end, Bost said his favorite word for the home is “cozy.”

“You’re expecting some massive mansion, cold mansion, but it isn’t that way at all,” Bost said.

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