Resort-Ready Retreat

A newly built St. Simons Island compound brims with room to live and play for a busy family of six

Ideally, a family home should cater to all who live in it, but when the family is comprised of two busy doctors and their four active teenage children, creating a home that satisfies everyone requires a great deal of planning. Just ask architect Tim Adams and designer Beth Webb, who recently completed a lakeside house for this family of six at Frederica, a golf community located on St. Simons Island, where the family lives full-time. Together, the Atlanta-based duo worked creatively yet methodically to design a spacious residence that is, in Webb’s words, “engineered for a very busy family.”

Because the homeowners wished for their house to be a destination for their children and their friends, Adams needed to make the house large enough to accommodate their requests for a media room, game room, pool and cabana, and even an indoor basketball court, not to mention the myriad bedrooms and a workhorse kitchen that are necessities for any large family. 

But despite measuring a sliver over 11,000 square feet, the house feels anything but cavernous thanks to Adams’ sensitive design, which placed the activity-oriented rooms on one side of the house, the quiet rooms—such as the library—on the opposite end and an airy great room in the middle that connects both sides. “Because of the large footprint, I had to break the house down into components, which in turn gives one the impression that the house was built over time through additions,” explains Adams. Adding to this effect was the architect’s decision to base his design loosely on English Manor-style architecture, which, with its gables and tucked-back roof lines, gives the house a rambling appearance.

Likewise, the home’s easygoing interiors suggest that they, too, happened over time, despite the fact that everything was carefully selected for this house. “The wife wanted a fresh slate, which meant that I was not working with anything pre-existing,” says Webb, who not only selected furnishings for their durability and comfort but also their ability to stand out against a predominantly neutral color palette. Textured fabrics, nubby wallpaper and woven rugs all lend visual interest, as do the bleached, weathered finishes that grace some tables and chairs, which have the added benefit of imbuing rooms with both a sense of warmth and age. Although Webb and Adams worked hard to design a comfortable, convivial residence, the house they helped to create has proved remarkably easy to live in. As Webb puts it, “this house fits the family’s casual lifestyle to a T.”

INTERIOR DESIGN Beth Webb, Beth Webb Interiors, (404) 869-6367; bethwebb.com ARCHITECT Tim Adams, TS Adams Studio Architects Inc. (404) 262-3499; tsadamsstudio.com LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT Planters, (404) 261-6002; plantersgarden.com BUILDER David Childers, Macallan Custom Homes, (404) 603-8833; macallanhomes.com