When Chad Francis, owner of Ellsworth-based Atlantic Landscape Construction, decided to build a home on Phillips Lake in Dedham, he knew he wanted to work with someone local. “I talked to several architects, but I’d seen some of the stuff Rob had done, and I liked that he had a little bit of funk to the way he goes about some things,” Francis said, explaining his decision to go with Rob Ervin, owner and principal of Ervin Architecture. “Once he and I got jamming and tossing stuff back and forth, he figured out my vibe and I figured out his vibe pretty quick.”

He and Ervin, who was based in Bangor at the time, realized their fathers had also worked together, many years earlier, which only further sealed the deal. “Chad and I have become very good friends,” says Ervin. “We’re wired similarly, and because of that, the end result and the process to get there was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. It was easy, it was fun. It was cerebral, and we didn’t stress out on things that we knew collectively we could get done. That next-level layer of detail and fuss to get everything right is evident in this house.”

After spending several summers on the lake, Francis and his wife, Michele, purchased the Phillips Lake property where the new home sits in “I’d been looking at this piece of land for a while. There was a camp on it, right where my house is now, and I hemmed and hawed on it until a friend of mine said, ‘You’ve talked about that piece of land for a long time, and if you’re not going to buy it, I think I’ll buy it.’ That was just enough to push me over the edge to grab it.”

The 1.45-acre site included 550 square feet of lake frontage, two beaches, and a 1930s-era log cabin. The original plan was to keep the cabin and then build a year-round home in its place once the kids—a son plus boy/girl twins, now 19 and 16 years old respectively—were in college. But the prospect of building something more permanent was exciting. “I was looking at the stage of life my kids were in and where everyone wanted to be—and everyone wanted to be at the lake. It’s just a fun place for us to hang out,” says Francis, who is now separated from his wife. “I wanted to make sure I had space so that, as my kids grow and have families of their own, they’ll have room to come home and a place to consider home.”

By the summer of 2019 he’d decided to move the log cabin to a nearby parcel of land, which he also owns, so he could begin building a new year-round home on the lakeside site. This meant clearing the lot to get the old camp out and prepping the property for the new foundation. Relying on his landscaping expertise, Francis kept the clearing of the property as minimal as possible, especially on the lakefront side. “There was a large effort in reforesting after the fact, but that was more on the road side,” he says. Making the new plantings look natural was an important consideration, as was privacy, minimizing the glare of headlights and buffering noise from the road in front of the house.

The list of must-haves for the home included decks and porches with specific views, an expansive living room with a cathedral ceiling and hand-hewn stone fireplace, and an adjacent kitchen with a lower ceiling to help create a more intimate environment. “There was a signature concept they were looking for,” says Ervin, who signed on in the fall of 2019, “and it was up to us to make sure we were scaling the spaces correctly, that we were picking the right finishes and the right lighting to make sure it was going to be extraordinary.” Functionality is another key element for Ervin, who asks clients to walk him through their days so he can understand exactly how they’ll live in the space, right down to where they put the keys when they come in. He then designs based on what he has learned.

From the beginning, Francis knew exactly how he wanted to modify the property, from moving the camp to elevating one side of the lot and dropping the other side. As a result, the new home resembles a relatively modest single-story house from the road but has a walkout lower level, opening up on the back side to reveal two floors of windows to take advantage of the expansive lake views. “I wasn’t really expecting the home to get quite as big as it did, but once I got into it, I was committed,” he says. “I’ve really moved around a lot, and I’m at a point in my life where I want to settle down. I’ll be here for a long time.”

Ervin describes the style of the finished six-bedroom, five-bathroom home as “Maine mountain modern,” drawing inspiration from nearby Acadia National Park. The mix of textures gives the structure a rustic mountain-chic sensibility, featuring hand-hewn beams, custom stonework, and artisanal craftsmanship throughout, including the use of birch bark in the primary bedroom. The home—with 6,824 square feet of living space and 1,050 square feet of outdoor space—has a commanding presence from the lake, with strong vertical elements, striking stone columns, and a stone-clad lower story. “We were able to take an otherwise monolithic building and add exterior framing, stonework, and other material treatments that introduce different types of texture, as well as the rooflines and porches, and to break it up and create something that was digestible,” says Ervin.

“We listened to the landscape,” he continues. “We used indigenous materials as much as we could.” In fact, most of the stone was either from the site or from Francis’s own quarry in nearby Franklin, and the home was framed in native spruce and hemlock, including some that had been cleared from the site. Francis did much of the landscaping and stonework himself. He also planted numerous trees on the property, including a few that have moved with him from previous homes. “One tree, a 16-foot paper bark maple, has been with me for the last four houses I’ve lived in. It has a little wind chime in it my daughter made for me,” he explains. “I couldn’t remove it without breaking the tree, so I moved the whole thing with me.”

Ervin is primarily known for his commercial work, but he likes to do a few residential projects each year. He sees each project as a creative endeavor, one where you can accomplish everything in the design. “I’m kind of a mad scientist in that respect, and I’m obsessive over the final design solution,” he says. That persistence paid off when it came to one of the biggest challenges on the project: the north-facing property.

“It’s one of the most beautiful spots on the entire lake, but it faces north, and the signature view north needed to have all this glass,” says Ervin. The windows had to be sealed to prevent drafts, and because they wouldn’t get direct sunlight, they’d always be in shadow. “We had to really wrestle with that, but we were able to hack the conditions. We oriented the house to grab morning sun and sunsets on the porches, but we couldn’t get any sun in the middle of the day. Ultimately, I think the house now kind of faces northeast. We added as much glass as we could in the dining room, which is due south.”

Challenges aside, for Ervin some of the best design decisions in the home include “putting the guts of the house into a walk-out lower level”—three bedrooms, a home theater, storage, and laundry—and being generous with the sizes of the rooms. He also applauds the decision to go all-in on the outdoor porches, especially the area around the outdoor fireplace. “I really want to hang out there,” he adds.

Francis and his family moved into the house in 2021, and when asked about his favorite spaces, he doesn’t hesitate: “The deck outside my bedroom. In the last year or so, I’m out there every night, especially in the summer,” he says. “And in the fall and the wintertime, I spend all of my time in the great room, in front of the fireplace.” As for the kids, he says that one of their favorite spaces in the house is the theater. “They love it. They’ll go down there sometimes and be all bunked-out with their buddies, all across the couches.”

For Francis, there’s one other area that’s especially close to his heart: the kitchen. “I entertain a lot. I love to host friends and family and cook for them. My folks are right across the cove from me, on the same lake. I have good friends on the lake, too. We host really big Sunday dinners, with 20-plus people sometimes. It’s an open invitation for the neighbors and friends, kids, and kids’ friends. It’s cool. And I love my big, open kitchen; it’s got a lot of space. I can really get after it in there,” he says, laughing. “If you like to cook, you like to cook—it takes room.”