Winnetka Lakefront, Estate of the Day

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Aug 25th 2007 at 1:05PM

Today's home sits on Lake Michigan in the posh Chicago suburb of Winnetka. What most endears this house to me is the fact that it truly seems designed for four-season living. The six-bedroom home is just steps to the beach and also has a large terrace for catching the summer sun. There is also an indoor pool for winter that has a fireplace in the same room. The home has large windows that face the lake and a modern style that looks fresh and not chilly. There are seven fireplaces, a wine cellar, media room and a master bedroom with a sitting room. It is listed at $7.85 million.

Gallery: Winnetka Lakefront

Tags: chicago real estate, estate of the day, illinois real estate, winnetka

Filed under: Estates

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

patric Aug 25th 2007 4:04PM

i have loved this estate forEVER!!! i have all the pictures downloaded and I'm completly obessed with it.

Dan Isaacs Aug 25th 2007 9:20PM

None of the gallery pages work for me. The Autoblog galleries work fine, but since Luxist started using them (which, BTW, I don't like as much as having pics inline with the extended article) I can only view the individual pictures, and use the "next" or "previous" link. I get this in both IE7 and Firefox 2.0.0.6.

It's just the Gallery view:
http://www.luxist.com/photos/winnetka-lakefront/

Dan Isaacs Aug 25th 2007 9:32PM

On topic, the house is wonderful. There is really nothing I don't like about it. I love the wood, the patio is great, the views amazing, the pool incredible, and the living areas tv-less.

Is the harp included?

Christine Aug 29th 2007 8:09PM

The craftsfmanship of the house and property appear to be grande. However, for a price tag of just under $8 million, I would certainly expect grande interior decor. What happened? It takes on a very unpolished, lack of design. Need help? I think with some professional attention it could easily then reach the asking price. The view is almost worth the ask anyway. Good luck.

Greenline Aug 29th 2007 7:10PM

Wow I think I was just there looking for my own place in Chicago, if I had known! (yeah right) Anyway regarding the galleries they work fine for me, but the one complaint I have about all of the Weblogs Inc Galleries is the lack of a link back to the related post or even back to the last page of the blog I was looking at. Sometime I go gallery hunting and I will want to see the related post to read the thing as well as see comments. Comments on the photos would be awesome too. Weblogs are you listening?

Marie Aug 31st 2007 2:04AM

Ok, where should I begin with this one? The house itself is alright on the outside, beautiful exterior, the back is way better than the front. Ok, the house is dated from 2002 but it looks like it's from the '70s, the owners have no sense of decor at all, 8 million for that? Please, all the furniture is from Ikea, and plus, there are not enough bedroom suites, I would never pay all that money for a house that doesn't even offer you enough baths. The pool area with those tiles? Hideous... And what's with that mix of wood, bricks and wallpaper...?? Please. If you really want to sell that house, get a nice interior designer asap!! Otherwise... Good luck!! And I mean, really good luck!! Though sell...

RN Sep 5th 2007 8:38PM

Yes the view and property are very exclusive. The interior looks cold and not done to the level one would expect of a home in this price area. The exterior lacks total archetectural appeal. It looks as though the builder designed it. Look at the photo of the DR, it looks cheap and notat all inviting.

Princess Poon Sep 5th 2007 9:03PM

Is it just me or is the interior cheap looking and poorly planned? The furniture all looks beat up! The walls and fireplaces are poorly finished and make it look like a tract home.

jim from ny Sep 5th 2007 10:43PM

who the hell wants to live there?

Drew Sep 5th 2007 11:07PM

The interiors are hideous. Small framed photos lined across a huge mantle do not get it. Hire someone to arrange the books on those office shelves. The ceilings seem very low for such a large house and whats with all those white vent covers in that tacky dining room. Hey, they make paint in colors now!! They obviously spent all their money on the house and had none left over for furnishings.

MaryO Sep 5th 2007 11:12PM

I would rather have my 350 square foot Columbus Circle Studio in Manhattan, where my bed comes out of the wall..than this guady nightmare. I also will sleep better at night on my Murphy bed knowing I am hogging the wealth, while others perish. This stuff disgusts me and just promotes more greed among a culturally and morally disintegrating culutre. This is my first response to anything ever on the internet and I doubt you will post it.

pamela Sep 6th 2007 12:29AM

Since when has greed ever been defined as someone living in a house they can afford? Just because someone's house is bigger than your pitiful little 350 sq. foot apt., doesn't mean they are greedy...but it DOES mean you are small, jealous and envious.

Jossy Sep 6th 2007 3:21AM

first, i'd never live near chicago, too cold in the long winter. i'd never buy this house even if it was in the southern state that i live in; too many windows, too big and bulky, and no horse facilities. we have a smaller house with 9 rooms, 4 are bedrooms, two baths, no kids, and it has acreage for livestock. place is completely fenced and cross fenced, has a 6 stall stable with tack room, two stall barn, big concrete floored hay barn with tool room, and 5 large dog kennels. you can get all this for a half million dollars, it's close to one of the biggest cities in america and yet far enough from it to be considered "county". light traffic, no smog, miles and miles of open land, forest everywhere, and a sight of the mountains. a major river runs about 30 miles away and the atlantic ocean is several hours away, mountains too. spring is like a jungle, summer is the same, and fall keeps green well into late december. winter's are short and never really bitter cold. like i said, i'd never live near chicago and that house is way overpriced. we have furry kids; horses, dogs, and cats and our place is perfect for them and for us. plus, we still have enough money to furnish the house in nice expensive furniture and own three automobiles, all brand new. i say good luck on selling that dump in chicago.

Jossy Sep 6th 2007 5:06AM

i came back to this site to make one more comment. it concerns what looks to be a neighboring house if you look closely through the trees in the backyard shot that has the white bench in it. i swear i can see the side of a house there. if this is so, who wants a neighbor so close? forgot to mention that our place, the one with horse facilities and acreage here in the south, is like a forested island. we have forest behind us that's behind the large long dirt horse paddock, forest on the right side of us which we own and has a wet weather stream in it plus grass for the horses, forest on the left side of us, and the front is where the large open grass pasture is. nothing better than looking out your front windows and seeing horses running or grazing in my opinon, it sure beats a bland flat lake. at the end of this, there's trees that line the long road and neighbors are still pretty far off. the left side has a grass area and riding ring, must mention this also. the road runs along the right forested side and the front of our land but it's far enough away that people can't be nosey and snoop on us. not that we're doing anything wrong but i hate having neighbor's real close...noise factor comes in here then too. it looks to me like that 7 million dollar dump has a very close neighbor and you could hit them if you tossed an unused very light tea bag at 'em i bet. we lived near lake superior, not real close but spent summers there swimming in it's icy cold waters when we lived there as kids. winter at the lake was bitter cold and snow is constant for months on end. hubby grew up right near houghton lake (lower peninsula) and family moved further north due to grandparents living there. i was an army brat, mom's dad lived in that godforsaken cold place too so this is why we spent time there. i hate the cold, i hate the snow, and that entire area and the chicago area has no tall mountains, just a few small bumps if any that qualify as that actually. oh, the other poster's were right about the cheap furnishings in that house, ikea does come to mind, and i swear they moved the same tall tree to different rooms because they only own one of them. hah. as for that big vacant office, i hated it. we turned one of our bedrooms into an office and have real oak file cabinets, real huge oak computer desk with lower drawers and upper shelves for my printer and fax machine...plus enough room for a second computer that's sitting alongside the one i'm using right now. my chair is leather, unlike the junky cheap one that's that house's office has. plus, i have a very big oak rolltop desk in this room along with another oak table that another laser printer can sit on with shelves under it for other stuff. this room also has a double french door in it, huge wide double window, and full carpeting. i saw too much wood flooring in that multimillion dollar house too...get it wet, even water drops, and it's ruined. our kitchen, foyer, sunroom, and double hallways have large ceramic tile flooring, this office and two bedrooms have carpeting, and the living room, dining room, and one bedroom have pergo vinyl slat flooring that looks exactly like wood. bathrooms have vinyl tile flooring with toss carpets. the flooring in this place is easy to clean, keep clean, and holds up to whatever type of traffic that walks, runs, or plays on it. i forgot to mention that our two hallways have oak wainscoating and the sunroom has the most beautiful stained and sealed wood walls that we put up ourselves. there are actually 4 sets of double french doors and one solid glass door with a wood frame inside this house. we had put a 5th set of french doors in years ago but tore them out, took them to the landfill, and just put solid oak up in the opening where the door frame was. it then opened up two rooms and made it into one huge room which is used as the living room and an extra sunroom for all of my big tropical trees that i take in for three months during winter. actually, this house may be alot smaller than that albatros house in chicago but this place has personality that we built into it along with warmth nonstop in every room. i really think they need me to decorate that chicago place to get it sold. it's too open and empty, sparce, and i bet there's an echo when you talk. well, i'd best get some sleep, my day starts around noonm it's almost 5 am now. eeks. i've never gone to a site like this one here and i doubt i will again because these multimillion dollar houses just aren't what they're cranked up to be.