Venice Beach Meets Detroit: A Challenging Midcentury Renovation That Made It Happen

Tucked atop a sloping site about 25 miles northwest of Detroit, Sodon Lake House takes its name from the body of water it overlooks: one of Michigan's few dichothermic lakes, whose temperature layers shift with the seasons.

From the road, the home reads as a modest midcentury ranch. But step inside, and its quirky multilevel interior unfolds zone by zone, revealing a more complex character.

The clients were a family of four returning to Michigan after 15 years in Southern California. They wanted a bright, open home that reminded them of Venice Beach.  

But the existing exterior fell short of that vision: not only was it in disrepair, it was clad in uninspiring materials and colored in dull reds, beiges, and browns.

“The home was definitely dark and gloomy,” says David Iannuzzi, principal and founding partner of Disbrow Iannuzzi, an architecture, interior design, and design-build studio in Ferndale, Mich.

The structure was sound, though, and the perimeter walls were successfully keeping water out.

“You could see the potential,” Iannuzzi says. “With a solid structure and a dry home, it definitely made more sense to work with what we had than to tear the home down and start over. In many ways, this biggest challenge became the biggest opportunity.”

The clients had fallen in love with the quirky home despite the work it required. So, as the potential of the home became clear, the focus became on how to bring out the brightness and casual sophistication of a Southern California home in a way that felt authentic to the property’s origins.  

“Any new materials that we used are all contextual to the midcentury modern lexicon,” says Iannuzzi. “While it’s not uncommon to find darkly colored midcentury homes in the metro Detroit area, we felt that we were remaining honest to its midcentury roots.”

Inside, the goals were to improve circulation and improve daylight. But there were challenges to work through first.

The interior was laid out across multiple mini levels. Several bedrooms, and the kitchen, were closed off and awkwardly “compartmentalized.”  

“For the most part, we worked with the layered floor plan instead of trying to tame it or make it one level,” Iannuzzi says.

But where leveling made sense for accessibility and function, the team didn't hesitate.

At one end of the home, a laundry and storage room had several steps leading to a side entrance. The team leveled this space by pouring a slab up to the existing finished floor, transforming it into an accessible ground-floor guest room. The laundry room was moved upstairs into an existing closet, closer to the bedrooms.

As the structure and layout came together, the team turned its attention to refining the home’s finishes. The dated 1980s marble was removed from fireplaces, and the surrounds were finished in plaster for a cleaner look. The concrete slab was exposed and polished, ridding the home of what Iannuzzi describes as “unnecessary” finishes. 

Like the exterior, interior surfaces had been colored and stained over the years, creating an uncomfortable mismatch.  To unify the spaces, the team established a consistent palette of bright surfaces, trowel-finished plaster, and polished concrete. Low-maintenance, no-VOC materials were chosen throughout, creating a calm and cohesive design identity that preserved the home’s midcentury DNA while also improving sightlines, daylight penetration, and flow.

Achieving all this required close collaboration. The homeowner, an interior designer, served as project manager, an arrangement that sped up selections and kept the vision intact. 

Restoring Sodon Lake House required more than a fresh coat of paint. But the team prioritized what mattered most: retaining structural integrity, simplifying circulation, and using timeless, durable materials to transform a gloomy midcentury ranch into a luminous, sustainable family home that honors its origins.

Iannuzzi says the result demonstrates how builders and designers can tackle challenging midcentury-era projects.

"It's important to not only save and restore structures, when possible, but to also not erase any significant history they may have," says Iannuzzi. "You can respectfully create a contemporary addition within nearly any style of existing architecture. And, if done well, the result will have more meaning, and probably be more beautiful, than if you simply erase everything and create a contemporary design."