Case Study: The House Judge

Wraparound Deck Helps Transform Wisconsin River Cottage

James Judge has lived in Arizona for a number of years, making a name for himself with beautiful home remodels he shares with TV audiences and hundreds of thousands of followers as?@thehousejudge?on social media. But his memories of summers as a kid in Wisconsin have never faded, and when the opportunity arose to buy a cottage down the road from where he grew up, Judge jumped at the chance to make it his own.

The home’s location on the Biron Flowage of the Wisconsin River creates a serene lakeside quality, and it’s surrounded by thick forests and looks across to an island full of eagles, herons, beavers, and other wildlife. “It’s the perfect escape for us in the summer,” Judge says. “A Wisconsin summer could be one of the best locations to be. From the weather to the temperature to just the natural beauty of the greenery and the seasons. It’s a really special spot. It definitely took me leaving to understand how great it was.”

Judge knew that a two-story structure that close to the lake and including a boat house was a rare find (and something you can’t build new today); he bought the property sight unseen in 2021 and designed the remodel in his head before even laying eyes on it. He and his partner drove 30 hours and embarked on a full-house renovation the following summer.

Judge knew that a two-story structure that close to the lake and including a boat house was a rare find (and something you can’t build new today); he bought the property sight unseen in 2021 and designed the remodel in his head before even laying eyes on it. He and his partner drove 30 hours and embarked on a full-house renovation the following summer.

Merging Three Designs

What Judge eventually discovered was that the cottage was three homes in one—the original fishing cabin built in the 1930s, a two-story addition from the 1960s, and a 1980s remodel that shifted the frame from a flat roof to a gabled roof. “The house was having an identity crisis,” the designer says, noting that many architectural elements simply didn’t make sense. “My goal was to unify the house and give it a new identity.”

Inspired by the gabled roofs, Judge settled on a Craftsman-style exterior, with header and footer trim, specialty gable vents, and large columns made with river rock. A new navy-blue-and-white color scheme on the home’s original siding offers a slight nautical nod.

The home’s jumbled origins created both visual and functional challenges for the outdoor living areas. A hodge-podge of concreate slabs, pavers, a broken patio, and an unlevel hardscape, along with exits at odd levels and a 35-foot slope down to the water, had created unsafe and unappealing conditions overall.

To overcome and eliminate these issues, Judge designed a wraparound deck then adjusted the existing doors and windows accordingly—including changing the living/dining room window to a sliding door, swapping the kitchen door for a window, and terminating doors at the lowest levels—to create a single-level outdoor space that was safer, aesthetically cleaner, and highly functional. For the sloping backyard, the deck extends out and, absent of railings, evokes the feel of an infinity edge floating over the water.

“The design made an incredible impact to create an indoor-outdoor lifestyle,” Judge says, noting that careful furniture selection, not always a high priority in that area, also played a key role in ensuring the deck felt like an extension of the home.

Because of Wisconsin’s harsh weather swings, Judge built the deck with composite decking from Envision Outdoor Living Products. “The quality of the Envision decking is incredible,” he says. “Wisconsin is a tough state. It gets all four seasons and all four seasons hard. Everything is an extreme—between temperature changes and weather changes and the proximity to water. With so many elements all the time, having such a durable product is everything because it’s going to have the longevity.”

Judge chose Envision’s?Ridge Premium?decking in Vintage Oak. The decking is made with Envision’s proprietary Compress Technology?, which uses tremendous heat and pressure to squeeze out air pockets, physically bond the cap and EverGrain Core? together, and press its signature non-repeating grain into the cap. “I’ve used a lot of decking products,” Judge says. “Envision is a really incredible product—the way the color has variation results in an authentic look.”

The outdoor living space continues on the second floor, where Judge changed out the existing, and slightly dangerous, foam rooftop deck over the kitchen to a screened-in porch. He used Envision decking here, as well, thereby creating a seamless, unified look as the eye moves down.

The future dock, which will moor the designer’s childhood boat, also will feature Envision decking. Like many Wisconsin lake houses, the dock surface will be designed in sections that pop out at the end of the summer season for storage in the boathouse during the winter.

“Whenever I look at renovating a house and figuring out an identity, I want it to be an identity that would last a lifetime. I want them to walk in and think this has always been a Craftsman,” Judge says. “And the decking does that too; it’s not an afterthought—it looks like it was made to be a part of the house.”