By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Tammy Jerz calls the tree house home, but Sister Lakes visitors honestly mistake it for a hunting lodge or bed and breakfast.
The 1980 Union High School graduate joked Thursday afternoon that so many gawkers stop to stare that neighbors appreciate traffic traveling more slowly along the treacherous stretch between Five-Mile Corner and Dewey Lake.
What passersby glimpse from M-152 is just the top level of three, and only one of its two most striking features is visible – a 122-foot walkway that looks like it should cross a crocodile-infested moat.
The other, which will be revealed to the curious on Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. during Decatur Optimists' holiday tour of log homes, is the 600-year-old cedar tree serving as a freestanding spiral staircase climbing from the "basement" theater to the loft. Six hundred is not a ballpark guess. Her nephew counted the rings.
Tammy and her husband Greg moved in July 12, so this is their first holiday in their new home.
Jerz is tapping the same creativity it took to design their 6,500-square-foot (including garage) rustic retreat to decorate it for the holidays.
Starting in October 2004, "I took bits and pieces from designs of houses I liked and how we wanted it to look on the property," which includes three ponds.
The Jerzes next consulted a logging company in Canada and an architect and engineer who specializes in log houses to pose a practical question: "Can it be built?"
"I didn't know how many ideas I had in me," she admits.
"At the time we bought the logs," she said, "there was 25-percent difference on the dollar, so we saved 25 percent to start with. We couldn't get coastal Western red cedar without the price just being horrendous here in the States, but in British Columbia, there on the river in Chilliwak, that's where it is.
"Bugs don't like red cedar, so you don't worry about termites or woodpeckers" when you also have a full-sized tree trunk towering through the master bedroom and stumps made into barstools around the pool table in the gameroom over the garage. She has her own "Log Cabin Wines," a black raspberry merlot she bottled at Front Street in downtown Dowagiac.
One supplier who furnished perfectly rounded logs thanks to a machine of his own design was rejected as not "real enough. We talked about a log house probably 15 to 20 years ago. I did a lot of Internet research and what I found is that the people who really know how to take care of them live in Canada. They brought in 250 gallons of stain and sealer."
There seems to be a panoramic view in every direction (or, as Greg says, "I've got the best deer blind in the country"), thanks to its "bizarre shape. Some log companies would not even quote this house because they like to do 90-degree corners. July 5 of 2005 they dug the hole to do the basement," Jerz said. "We placed the order for the logs in January 2005. In British Columbia, they actually cut the logs and fit them so it's all set together on the site. It's not prefabricated, it's hand done. To become a master log builder you've got to put in a lot of hours as a grunt. They skin the bark off these logs with basically a flat, square-blade shovel upside down, then they do use some electric planers to get the hard stuff off a half million pounds of trees – 450,000 pounds. It took five semi trucks with 90,000 pounds a piece. Traffic was lined up all down the road."
"People still stop" and ask for tours. "We kind of got used to it," Jerz said. "The funniest story I have was one Saturday when we were building. There were guys working on the stone fireplace. I always cleaned up the mess the contractors left. They'd start out fresh and you can save $10,000 to $15,000. A car stops. This lady comes down the side of the hill and knocks on the window. 'Can I help you?' She said, 'When does the restaurant open?' I wanted to tell her I haven't hired a chef, but I didn't. I told her it's my house and she wanted to see it and everybody piled out of the car.
"We had three families on bicycles stop last summer," she continued. "They were from Chicago. One little girl, about 10 or 11, goes, 'I watch that MTV stuff where they show famous people's houses (Cribs), and you may not be famous, but your house looks better than theirs.' I just laughed and thanked her. Christmas is at my house this year. Can you imagine?" She'll need a hat for the moosehead they hung with a 20-foot stepladder and maybe something to hang from the elk antler chandelier.
Decorating for Christmas "is all brand-new for me," she said, adjusting a "Disney tree" ornament.
"Everybody stops to look at it," Jerz said. "Police even put up 'no parking' signs on the side of the road. Fourth of July the state cops were talking to people who pulled over to the side of the road."
Jerz wasn't anxious to have an open house, but figured, "It's for a good charitable cause. The Optimist Club does a lot for kids with its soccer program and different things."
Different floors feature different themes, such as snowmen, reindeer, moose and bear, plus her Round Oak Stoves and a quilt from last summer's national stove show and other Dowagiac memorabilia crop up everywhere.
Radiant heat emanates from the floors. Water runs through coils from the green outbuilding with a wood-fired boiler.
Visitors must glance around so as to not miss anything above or below, like stuffed squirrels cavorting on an interior cedar-shingled roof.
Carved doors came from Munising. The mantel was carved in British Columbia.
A bedroom TV is mounted near the ceiling so it can be viewed while lying down.
Traffic slips by as silently as the snow falling outside.
The only sound is ice occasionally sliding off the metal roof.
Greg has Jerz Machine in the former Jessup Door building on E. Railroad Street.
Tammy, a pioneering female demolition derby driver at the Cass County Fair, has worked in nursing in Kalamazoo for the past 17 years.
They have three grown children.