HOMES OF THE TREASURE COAST
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great place to have a party, and one night we had formal
tables on the porch for a gathering of supporters for St.
Andrew’s School. Phil Gates laughed in his usual boisterous
manner. The turkeys began to gobble loudly. Then silence.
Phil laughed again. The turkeys returned with a chorus and
the whole party broke out in hilarity. That was in the ’90s and
no one remembers what they ate, but everyone remembers
the turkeys and Phil’s laughter. What a night!”
The 3,800-square-foot house at Lost River oozes Old
Florida. Varn’s vision of the house was built without formal
drawings.
“This house was designed to be seen from the inside out,”
she says. The crown molding throughout the home has a
real wood finish and is not painted, a rare design choice. The
wooden staircase in the foyer, with vaulted ceiling, has a
landing on the way to the second floor.
Pete Peterson, who just turned 98, is a family friend who
built the home at Lost River. “It was all Suzanne’s ideas and
I just put them together,” he says. “They threw some mighty
nice parties there. It was fun to build because it was so difficult.
It’s such a peaceful place.”
Necessity drove several changes to the home. Outside the
foyer, Varn had a deck built that serves no purpose other than
to make it simple to wash the windows without standing on
a ladder. The nook off the family room used to open out to a
deck before it was converted to a bay window and a bar was
built into the closet. Today it is used for craftwork. “I love
taking nothing and making something out of it,” she says.
When they ran out of money to finish the kitchen countertop
with butcher block, the Varns discovered bowling lane
wood for sale by Jensen Beach Bowl. The 10 black spots for >>
Second-generation citrus man and community leader Myron “Mac” Varn
and his wife, Suzanne, built their dream home for their four children on a
piece of property his father sold him for $1. Mac Varn died in 2003.
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