Antioch farmhouse shows owners' influence

When an artist paints original designs on the floor and stairs of her home, it adds a warm, personal touch.

But Carol Sackschewsky actually designed the house, too.

On the very edge of the suburbs in Antioch just south of the Wisconsin border, Carol and Roy Sackschewsky found 7 acres and planned the house that they moved into 16 years ago.

The contemporary cedar version of a farmhouse sits on the Fox River, just across from a Lake County Forest Preserve.

Carol had done architectural drawing in college, and said the layout was inspired by the farmhouse of her childhood.

The open floor plan starts with the kitchen on the east for morning sun. Then comes the dining room with a huge table and finally the living room.

"You can have a smaller home and still entertain a bigger group when it's open," she said. "We can have 30 people for hors d'oeuvres."

The couple's recent updating of the kitchen includes a wall of Amish oak cabinets, where an open rack conveniently stores Carol's collection of white porcelain platters.

The Sackschewskys made the small island with the cooktop and decorated it with twisted wood trim.

"I designed it. He is very good at cutting precisely," she said.

The large, colorful flower portrait on the side of the island came from the same calendar as the ones on the backsplash above the counter.

"They are lovely linen paper, and I like botanicals. I painted a frame around each," she said.

The three-room area features lots of windows and is furnished with antiques, including a cabinet with a front panel that's one piece of wood more than 2 feet wide. Carol stores wrapping paper here.

An oak mission-style armoire hides the television.

Two pine toolboxes sitting on top of each other held Legos when their son, Nate, was young.

Part of the ceiling in this area is lofted, and Carol's studio and gallery overlook it from above. She paints watercolor nature scenes, landscapes, still lifes and people, and teaches art at Grass Lake School. Her husband teaches at a nuclear power plant.

The main level also has a guest room and an office that was originally Carol's studio. Two sets of French doors open on either side of the see-through fireplace that the office shares with the living room

Carol brushed a design of large orange and purple-brown squares with a leaf stencil border on the floor -- one of many she and her husband laid.

Rather than paint, Carol stained the design with polyurethane and dry colorants.

The steps to the second floor each have a diamond pattern in red and green that she considers reminiscent of Native American designs.

The master bedroom features a fireplace, but nothing can outclass the view that includes sunrises on the river.

The lower level has a framing room and a walkout family room with a brick fireplace.

Gardening also is very important to Carol.

"We both come from agrarian backgrounds. He's from Nebraska, and I'm from South Dakota," she said.

This time of year visitors notice the collection of birdhouse gourds growing on a fence as well as the arbor over the garden gate.

Two other couples farm cooperatively with the Sackschewskys, helping with the planting and harvesting.

One of the men starts gourds from seed, she said.

"We use them to make birdhouses for wrens. We bury them in leaves or bark over winter. They get a wonderful color. We tried taking them in the house, but they rot. We might try to leave them hanging this year."

Other important plantings around the lawn include many trees and shrubs: crabapples, peonies, river birches, red-twig dogwoods, redbuds, barberries, Royal maple and forsythia.

"We plant for color. I love the redbud trees -- that spring color and the shape of the leaves. It's so sweet like a little heart."

She points to a 30-foot fir tree and said her son had gotten it for Arbor Day in second grade.

"My father used to call this the house of trees, but when we bought it, it was a cornfield with the only trees along the river."

One flower bed just outside the fruit and vegetable garden features red Knockout roses and some blue pottery she made years ago.

She plans to espalier mini nectarine and other fruit trees to make a fence in the rear of the garden.

Near the home's back door -- the one everyone comes to -- is Carol's teenage garden.

"You have to let it do it's own thing," she said. "It was supposed to be an English cottage garden."