The Life They Imagined
Dan and Sarah Hill freely admit they designed their home for children. “And Sarah and I are the biggest kids of all,” Dan says, laughing.
Clearly, the Timberlake, Ohio, family of five is suited for life on the lake. Dan wears shorts well into November. Sarah is barefoot year-round. Jack is already a master stone skipper at age 7, and Max, 4, and Sydney, 1, are sure to offer fierce competition in the future.
It’s a life the couple has envisioned since meeting shortly after college. The Chardon, Ohio, natives will celebrate 12 years of marriage this year — probably with a huge party on the beach. The event will be just one of many; the Hills offer a 365-day-a-year open invitation to friends and family, all of whom know they’ll find their hosts on the beach when they arrive.
In the summer, impromptu guests are greeted with scavenger hunts, pizza-and-movie nights and bonfires big and bright enough to light the way for passing freighters. All birthday parties spill over from the spacious kitchen and living area overlooking the lake, down the large deck to the sandy beach below. The Fourth of July is always a big celebration.
Fall brings football, and to make sure they don’t miss a game or a sunset, Dan installed an outdoor TV on the portico near the built-in grill.
Snow presents no problem. It actually prompted a Polar Bear Plunge party held on New Year’s Day.
All of it — the small-town atmosphere (Timberlake has only 800 or so residents), the waterfront activities, the comfortable home that beckons all who visit to stay a little longer — constitutes the life Dan, 37, and Sarah, 35, have always wanted. It goes back to a quote by Henry David Thoreau that Sarah gave Dan early in their relationship: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.” It would become an inspiration for the Hill family in good times and bad.
The Unimaginable
In 2005 the Hills believed they were living the life they imagined for themselves. Dan and Sarah had traveled extensively for his job as a district manager for General Electric. They had settled in New Hampshire, often visiting nearby Boston and spending leisurely weekends boating. They set their sights on someday living in one of the waterfront homes.
But in May, Dan received a call that his father had died in an accident. It would be the defining moment that would lead the Hills back to Ohio and back to the core of their life imagined.
Dan had grown up hunting, fishing and boating with his dad always by his side. His childhood memories were vibrant examples of what he wanted for his own children, and within a year he had left GE for a similar position with a smaller company, Crescent Electric Supply, near Cleveland.
With Jack, Max and Sarah, a stay-at-home-mom, still in New England, Dan set a new plan in motion. They would still have their waterfront home, but it would include family close by. Dan was so excited by the prospect that he got up every day at 3:30 a.m., the time new listings were sent to his e-mail, to peruse anything that had “waterfront” attached to it. In July 2006, he signed a contract on a 1940s colonial with a backyard so overgrown you couldn’t see the beach. But Dan saw the potential and went forward with plans to renovate and build an addition. Sarah and the two boys moved into the home in the fall.
The next year would be trying. Winter heating bills exceeded $1,000, there was snow — inches of it — blowing into the master bedroom, and windows were bowing to the strong northerly winds. The Hills decided to raze the property and start fresh.
Architect Gary Brown from Hudson, Ohio, who had designed plans for the original renovation, stayed on for the new build. When Dan says “he drew up plans,” he means it literally. “Gary hand drew the plans for our home,” he says with awe.
“He’s an artist, really,” continues Dan, recalling the process, which was finalized after only four months and three penned revisions. It began by Dan and Sarah showing Brown pictures of homes they liked. They then described their favorite parts of the seaside manors they had admired on their East Coast boating trips. More importantly, they expressed to Brown how they wanted to live.
“We wanted to create a home for our children and a summer house for our friends,” explains Dan. They wanted an unstructured feel to the home — an open, easy, natural style and flow that would inspire spontaneity and encourage fun. And they wanted guests to get that feeling as soon as they came up the drive.
“So many lake homes take up the entire width of the lot,” explains Dan. “You pull in and you can’t see the lake or easily access it without going through the house. Sarah and I wanted a portico so friends and family can see the lake when they arrive and feel as if they’re just steps away from it.”
They also wanted the home to look as if it had been there forever, adding to the overall feel of comfort they sought outside and in. “We want guests to be themselves,” says Dan, adding that after your first visit to the Hill home, the rule is you help yourself to whatever is in the fridge.
Less than a year after they razed the original home, their vision was accomplished. Swimming, beachcombing, boating and fishing are regular activities, and the uninterrupted kitchen-dining-living area often fills on a moment’s notice as friends, family and neighbors drop by.
The Viking oven can bake eight pizzas at once, and if you were to open the double-door stainless steel refrigerator, you’d find all the ingredients ready and waiting. And while most of the fun is outdoors, there could be as many as 20 kids at any given time in the 900-square-foot play room over the garage. Included in the space are air hockey, foosball and pingpong tables, a Wii system and multiple crafting areas overflowing with beach finds, crayons and construction paper. Glitter glue is permanently affixed to the floor, a sparkling reminder that their home is exactly as they wanted it to be.
“We’re blessed,” says Dan, barely audible over the children’s shrieks of laughter bouncing off the walls.
It’s the life they imagined and more.