LIVING LARGE: $5.95 million cottage “isn’t too full of itself”

If it’s designed well, even a 4,000 square foot house can feel like a cottage, architect Greg Jones says.

“You have to be sensitive to the scale of each room (and) the composition of the entire residence,” Jones, a managing partner of Tampa’s

Chancey Design Partnership told The Log. “The focus has to be ... on the massing of the entire home and get down to human scale on the spatial restraints.”

Jones applied those principles in designing a $5.95 million custom beachfront home in WaterSound Beach, a 256-acre C.R. 30-A enclave that The St. Joe Company expects will have 511 homes when built out.

The three-story, five-bedroom, five-and-a-half bath home is designed “cottage style,” which Jones describes as “early 1900s, kind of vintage America, warm, cozy, intimate, and intimately scaled. It doesn’t feel too grandiose, isn’t too full of itself — it’s more about the space and the people that inhabit it.”

Focusing on the individual room spaces as well as the overall house design is what makes it possible “to keep this grand home intimate and inviting,” Jones said in a press release. The spaces include a second-floor family room, second floor master suite, third-floor den, a dining area that seats 12, a smaller breakfast nook and a reading den, with a staircase and an elevator connecting all three floors.

Other features include:
•Exterior porches on all three floors.
•A hot/cold plunge pool on the front deck, with an outdoor shower and changing room.
•Custom wood cabinets throughout the house.
•A 756-square-foot garage.
•A spa-style wading pool.
•A full house audio/visual system that includes the terraces.
•Stone fireplace.
•Two kitchen islands with two dishwashers, an ice machine and a vegetable sink.
•Halogen lighting for kitchen under-cabinets.
•A complete Internet-controlled security system.
•Whole home audio.
•Plasma, high-definition cable systems.
•One remote control.
•A complete surround sound theater system in the great room with a six-disc changer.

Designing a home before the buyer is involved might seem difficult but Jones said he draws on his experience designing dozens of other Gulf-front residences: “I draw a lot on what other users and clients have liked.

“We’ve been working in WaterSound since its inception and understand its code intimately. There’s areas in even the most restrictive building codes for creativity, so there’s still the opportunity to create something new and special.”