A County retreat, with pickleball court

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131 Peats Point Rd., Prince Edward County, Ont.

Asking price: $2,398,000

Taxes: $7,718.07 (2022)

Lot size: 86.03 by 373 feet (1.99 acres)

Agent: Anita Springate-Renaud, Engel & Völkers Toronto Central

The backstory

Most doors are unlocked by a key, but for the cottage at Peats Point it was the doors that unlocked a new design.

The front door is copper and comes with a 300-year warranty. “It’s extraordinary: heavy and beautiful,” said Anita Springate-Renaud. “My dad bought these doors and decided to build a house around them.”

The four-season cottage sits on the Bay of Quinte across from Belleville; Peats Point Road travels up a short finger of land that juts off of the headlands Ontario’s Prince Edward County. Ms. Springate-Renaud is a real estate broker with Engel & Völkers and is selling her father’s property herself, although admittedly this is not her usual Toronto-area listing.

“My parents bought a small cottage in 2003, always with the intention to build something,” said Ms. Springate-Renaud, whose father still owns the cottage. “They would spend summers up there; my kids loved it, there was a water trampoline … but my dad always wanted a place where everyone would fit.”

The house is inspired by the West Coast modern style, typified by simple ground-level designs with wood siding and walls of windows that have seamless indoor-outdoor transitions. “My aunt lived in Squamish [B.C.], and he liked those style of homes,” Ms. Springate-Renaud said.

Her father began building his dream cottage in 2018, but was halted by the pandemic and then delayed further by health issues and Ms. Springate-Renaud’s mother dying. Work carried on fitfully, and the home hovered around 95-per-cent finished until finally in March of this year when all the final fixtures were added. “It was supposed to be their retirement place: that’s where he wanted to stay,” she said.

It’s built to last and be energy efficient with a steel roof, extensive spray-foam, in-floor heating and backup forced air system. Even a new dock was put in last year, but with her father no longer able to drive the cottage is just not practical to keep.

“Some things don’t work out. You gotta veer and make the best of it,” she said.

The house today

A detached two-car garage does a lot of work to shield the property from the roadway, but beyond it down a long laneway is a large asphalt paved apron/courtyard that’s painted with a pickleball court outline that her father refuses to remove even if he is selling the house.

“We kept sealing the driveway, and he kept painting a pickleball court on top of it, it’s like ‘Okay have your pickleball,’” Ms. Springate-Renaud said.

From the court the house looks almost like two cottages connected by a glassed in walk-way that you can look straight through to the lake when the blinds are up.

Stepping into the foyer it’s clear the house is planned around the lake view: A huge deck acts as a courtyard between the two wings of the house with massive window walls that draw the lake views in. The window walls can open up and turn the dining room in between the wings into one large indoor-outdoor entertaining space.

“We reinforced it so if you wanted to you could put a hot-tub on that deck,” said Ms. Springate-Renaud, and underneath the deck is a generator, a handy feature for a rural area.

To the right is the larger of the two wings, a rectangle that includes the combined kitchen and family room and the primary suite is tucked away behind the pantry wall. Actually, it’s accessible either from a door on the outside wall, or through the pantry itself which connects the kitchen to the stacked laundry equipment inside the ensuite bath.

The kitchen is all white: counters and cabinets, with induction range with no exhaust hood to obstruct the openess, opting for a downdraft vent that rises up out of the counter. A large island with bar seating anchors the space beyond which is the largest of two living room spaces with vaulted ceiling and a steel and glass-railed staircase that climbs to the second level loft. In the ceiling of this wing are four huge skylights.

On the opposite side of the house the second wing is about half the depth of the other. It has two guest bedrooms on the ground level (facing the road) a shared four-piece bathroom and a smaller living room with another window wall to the deck and lake. Another steel and glass staircase curves up to another loft and vaulted ceiling that also has four skylights, just a little smaller like the rest of the wing.

Officially there are three bedrooms on the main floor, but the two lofts are designed to expand the house’s guest compliment. And there’s another large loft above the two-car garage, a sort of elevated bunkie.

“My cousin had a family reunion there, 30 of them stayed over,” said Ms. Springate-Renaud.

Bottom line

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Whether you call it a cottage, a cabin, a camp, a beach house or any other variation a second home or recreational property is undeniably a luxury. Ironically, it’s not a luxury Ms. Springate-Renaud was able to indulge in much. She helped her father manage the project of building the new cottage, but has not been able to spend much time inside the finished product. For that matter, she didn’t summer at the original cottage much either.

“It was nice, but it’s not for me … I can’t disappear for two months,” she said.