Issues → September/October 2007 → Home & Garden →

A Place Built for Sharing on Sebago Lake

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The Migis Touch: Creating the Lodge Look

Joan and Tim Porta have literally made a career of interior decorating. They travel to several gift shows a year to purchase items for three shops they run in conjunction with Migis. Much of the ambience they create in their guest rooms originates on these buying trips. Joan's specialty is the lodge look. Her advice for achieving this style is simple: "Allow the natural and seasonal elements from the outdoors to be reflected inside."

Organic materials -- wood and woven rugs -- and stone and metals define Joan's decorating. A fieldstone chimney flanks the stairway, whose wrought-iron railing curls like a vine. In the master bedroom of our featured home, Joan highlights nature's palette with a green cotton coverlet complemented by a mushroom-colored wool throw. A wrought-iron bedside lamp with gently curving stem and leaves looks like a flower. Knotty-pine walls remind us that the trees are just beyond. In other rooms, Joan selects local creatures to grace walls and shelves: a wooden loon, a bronze bear with round belly (suggesting the landlocked salmon that thrive in Sebago Lake), bold moose designs on hooked rugs, and in the bath a simple fir tree motif bordering ivory tiles. A small "hobo-style" table with twig legs looks as though it might have been plucked from beneath a tree. Favorite accessories include stoneware pottery, wooden bowls of seasonal fruits and vegetables, wildflower-laden pitchers, soaps shaped like frogs and fish, wrought-iron lamps and candlesticks, duck decoys, and cotton throws decorated with herons, owls, and other wildlife.

Most of the accessories mentioned here may be found at Cry of the Loon, The Nest, and The Barn, the Portas' three shops, located at the end of the Migis driveway on Route 302 in South Casco, Maine. 207-655-5060; migis.com/about/shops.html

Detail: A Never-Ending Porch

To connect sweeping views of Sebago with the interior of the house, the owners selected glass doors. The doors, which lead to the screened porch, are custom-made of insulated glass cased in natural-colored cedar with a bifolding hinge. When they're open, the doors disappear against oak beams. This creates the illusion that the great room with its giant timber frame is simply part of the outdoors, where tall white pines reach toward the sky.

Resources

Rental information: $8,400 per week, available through Migis Lodge on Sebago Lake. 207-655-4524; migis.com

Builder: Tom Smith, Bear River Builders Inc., Bridgton, ME. 207-647-4059; rmlh.com