In 2011, my brother and I took over maintenance for my grandmother’s weekend home on the Santa Fe River, just outside her home town of High Springs, FL. The concrete structure was designed and built in the Frank Lloyd Wright era by my great uncle, Steve Kennedy, who was a landscape architect. Prior to that it had been a 1920’s log cabin that my great grandmother, the town florist, purchased as a place to paint and relax with family and friends in the 1940’s, but wood structures don’t hold up well in the swampy environment. We updated the kitchen, turned the cooking porch into a living room, and added a deck and dock as part of the time honoring remodel. I kept the existing family heirloom furniture and decor and added as much function and comfort as possible as we began sharing it as a vacation rental for others to enjoy when we weren’t there.
